Four hundred and fifty years of exploration, settlement and cultural development-from Columbus' first voyage until the present day-are the raw material out of which this narrative is made. North and South America are presented as the crucible of a colonizing experiment of unparalleled success. The participants were the Spanish of South America and southern North America, the Portuguese in Brazil, and the English, French, Dutch and Swedes in various sections of North America. As we know, the experiment worked, and it is no small part of Captain Baldwin's task is to have gauged the measure of success achieved by each of the participating nations in the various states that grew out of their efforts. Because-after all-the success was relative, total in some places and far from total in others. That the over all picture is encouraging must be admitted by the most frost bitten enemies of democracy. As he surveys mankind from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego and from Cape Breton to Vancouver Sound. Captain Baldwin finds the unifying bond linking the many countries of the Western Hemisphere has sometimes the thickness of a submarine cable, at other times that of a persistently thickening rope. He finds too, that democracy has as many faces as the states that boast its blessings.