Passages of Time, Narratives in the History of Amherst College

Most of the selections in this anthology are narrative chapters of Amherst College history from the earliest days to recent time. They describe the unsightly college of the first decades and-more than a century later-the tree-shaded campus known as The Fairest College. Writings by 21 authors take the reader chronologically from the 1820s, when students learned the rudiments of Vulgar Arithmetic, up to a 1990 colloquium on quantum mechanics. Essay titles include The Coeducation Debate of 1871, The Mischief of Robert Frost, The Civil Disobedience of John Ward.

Here one can also read about student anti-slavery efforts, Civil War casualties, college dealings with the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, baseball glories, faculty deliberations, and a black student's sensitive view of his undergraduate experience in the 1970s. The editor opens each selection with a short introduction to give it further context. There are accounts of memorable teaching, and portraits of prominent educators and alumni-among them Robert Frost, Alexander Meiklejohn, Calvin Coolidge (1895), Joseph Hardy Neesima (1870), and Charles Hamilton Houston (1915).

Such a volume is long overdue. Together these articles form the first wide-ranging book about Amherst history to be published in more than 50 years.