Alice Hamilton. A life in letters

upon manuscript sources, many not previously exploited and some in private hands. Insights abound into not only Simon's career, presented on a decidedly unheroic scale, but also the many lives he touched during these years including Hideyo Noguchi, William Osler, William Welch, and the author's uncle (and writer of reports on medical education), Abraham Flexner. If some of the description of late-nineteenth-century American medicine is tediously familiar, the intrinsic interest of the sections on Helen's relationships with Bertrand Russell and with her sister Carey (feminist and president of Bryn Mawr College) compensates in full. The crafting of this work shows the narrative skill that won the author a Pulitzer Prize Citation for his biography of George Washington. For the medical historian, a couple of evenings spent with An American saga make a splendid busman's holiday.