Both these books consist of collections of essays and reviews that have previously appeared in print – ten of them in Professor Himmerlfarb's volume and twenty-one in Professor Stone's. However, anyone thinking of spending his money on the latter should note that of those twentyone fifteen appeared in an earlier collection a few years ago. Though we are assured that on this second appearance those fifteen have been rewritten ‘to focus attention upon broad historical problems and.issues and away from the merits and defects of the particular book under review’, the changes are minor. While it is good to have Stone's second or third thoughts on some themes, the fact that the bulk of the book originated in book reviews remains obvious. Stone has for some time enjoyed the lavish patronage of the New York Review of Books, which allows him enough space for the display of much learned detail, sometimes enlightening and sometimes confusing. In this era of historical revision even he can fall behind the times: chapter 12, on ‘the new eighteenth century’, is in fact about the old eighteenth century, before the Jonathan Clark revolution. If there is a general theme holding these pieces together it is Stone's conviction that a recent great age of historical studies, one of whose ornaments he was, has passed away, to be succeeded by an age of pettifoggers who now subject the buildings erected by the heroes to quibbling questions about the soundness of the foundations and the quality of the brickwork. Though the range of his reviewing is as awesome as his verdicts are positive, let us humbly hope that Stone will not revisit the past and the present a third time.