Book Reviews and Notices The major criticism that must be offered to this work is the author's frequent preoccupation with Livingston's accounts, important as they were to the conduct of the public business and difficult as it was for Livingston to collect his arrears. Details of the money amounts reappear in boring and confusing frequency and obscure the outlines of his role in New York politics, though it is instructive to learn how difficult it was to do business with 18th-century English bureaucracy. There is also a tendency to draw firm conclusions where the evidence in text and footnote is inconclusive. No question exists, however, that Leder sees things in their proper light and offers reasonable explanations for mooted points. It is merely that, for instance, attribution of authorship of the journal described on p. 175 is not supported, the British fleet was not "destroyed" in the St. Lawrence (p. 221), and Livingston's role as chief architect of Hunter's amicable settlement with the New York Assembly is not evidenced. Then, too, the extreme selectivity and over-compression required of most biographies unless they are to become multivolumed ones, which in this case would not be warranted, results in some vagueness. His son John's marriage is discussed with no mention of the important marriage of his daughter, Margaret, to Samuel Vetch at about the same time. Reasons for changes in political atmosphere are not always apparent and, in the later chapters, political changes in England that affected the colonies are ignored. It is not clear why the experiment with producing naval stores by the Palatine irnmigrants failed, nor is a "Jean Cast" who appears suddenly (p. 222),jdentified. Dr. Leder exhibits a clear, straightforward style, although there is little lift or humor. One gains the impression that Livingston was a rather dour Scot. Some incoherence and grammatical lapses are probably owing to the need for compression in a life that was so full of disparate interests. The study is unusually fully documented, using sources like the rich mine of Livingston papers in the Livingston-Redmond Manuscripts at the Roosevelt Memorial Library which have remained until recently unexplored. On the whole, this is a long-needed work on one of those early American leaders about whom we have known too little. It successfully discloses currents in colonial New York politics even where it fails to trace their full flow. It is an addition to knowledge of early 18th-century America, both its internal and imperial history, which has too long remained a neglected area in a period which is acknowledgedly the "seedtime" of the nation. Samuel Vetch, Colonial Enterpriser. By G. M. Waller. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early 413