his reaction to Franklin Roosevelt. Hisnantipathy to “that man in the WhitenHouse” was open and boundless. Asnthe 1936 election approached, thenTribune ran such headlines as “Onlyn217 days remain to save your country.nWhat are you doing to save it.”” andntelephone operators at the newspaperngreeted incredulous callers with thensame salutation.nAnd as Roosevelt slowly maneuverednthe nation into World War II via Lend-nLease, destroyer deals (which oddlynenough was an old McCormick idea),nattacks on German subs and trade embargoes,nthe Tribune fought a lonelyncampaign for American neutrality. Thencampaign was a responsible one. Thenpaper deplored Lindbergh’s statementsnon the Jews, found Hitler abhorrentnlong before the outbreak of war, andnbelieved that “the case for Americannparticipation in the war does not restnon detestation of Hitler. If it did, ournnavy, with the consent of the wholennation, would have started across thenAtlantic the day Poland was invaded.”nBut there was much more to the Mc­nCormick story than opposition to FDR.nThe Trib itself established certainnstandards of excellence for reportingn(it won several Pulitzer Prizes undernMcCormick until his editorial policiesnput the paper beyond the pale), for developingncorrespondents (on its rosternat one time or another were RobertnCromie, William L. Shirer, GeorgenSeldes, Willard Edwards, Edmond Taylor,nFloyd Givvons, Ring Lardner, FinleynPeter Dunne, Walter Howey), fornbeing one of the few American dailiesnto maintain its own reporters abroad,nfor introducing such processes as rotogravurenand coloroto, and for suchn”scoops” as securing the text of thenTreaty of Versailles.nThe Tribune was also a wild andnwoolly part of Chicago in the 1920’s,nand even before that exuberant decadenarrived it was creating waves. Its circulationnwar with Hearst’s American andnhis Examiner from 1910 on were realnwars, unfortunately setting a precedentn26inChronicles of Culturenfor the gang wars that wracked the citynduring Prohibition. It battled constantlynwith flamboyant Mayor “Big Bill”nThompson and eventually helped tondrive Chicago’s last Republican mayornfrom office. One of its own reporters,nJake Lingle, after his sidewalk murdernwas found to have been one of the kingpinsnof the Capone mob.nHappiness, Lucknand Social SciencenChristopher Jencks et al.: Who GetsnAhead? The Determinants of EconomicnSuccess in America; BasicnBooks; New York.nby William E. CagenAt a time when most people arenstruggling to keep even, the questionnof who gets ahead seems anachronistic.nThe question, though, is intriguing forna variety of reasons, and a substantialnamount of research has been conductednin attempts to answer it. The searchnfor the answer to “who gets ahead” hasnin fact aged and evolved to the pointnwhere Jencks and his co-authors cannuse up the better part of this volume inna review and critique of the major researchnefforts in this area.nAs a review of the literature. WhonGets Ahead? is a qualified success. Thenqualification is that the reader shouldnbe a sociologist or employed at a policymakingnsubstation in the Department ofnHealth and Welfare. Without the perspectivenand interest peculiar to thosenoccupations, it is doubtful that a readernwould find much in this volume toncapture his attention. Jencks and hisncolleagues-in-print have done a creditablenjob in investigating and interpretingneleven surveys which attempt to uncovernthe determinants of economicnDr. Cage is a corporate economist fromnMissouri.nnnSuch was the life of Colonel McCormick,nand so it is recounted by JosephnGies in a biography of verve, spirit andnintelligence. What Mr. Gies somehownforgets is to speculate on how Mc­nCormick would feel if he could readnthe opinions of today’s Tribune on culture,nmores, ideological commitment.nBut that’s another story. Dnsuccess in the U.S. The surveys arenprimarily statistical in nature andnJencks’s work is the same type. Therenare tables, percentages, coefficients, regressions,nexponents and R-squares sufficientnto keep any statistician busy forndays. The authors of Who Gets Ahead?nappear to be well grounded in theirnstatistics, and their sifting and winnowingnin an area so replete with policynimplications deserves commendation.nJencks et al. are also deserving of commendationnfor bringing to light—certainlynunintentionally —two mattersnwhich are of fundamental importancenin their own right.nThe first pertains to research methodologynin the social sciences. While thatnsubject in itself is esoteric, it is increasinglynimportant as social scientists comento influence public policy formulation.nIn Who Gets Ahead? and apparently innthe original articles that the Jencks crewnreviews, the reader’s attention is directednto such questions as what effect doesnfamily background, academic ability,nnoncognitive traits, etc., have on a person’snoccupational status and economicnsuccess. It is easy, when trying to answernsuch questions, to apply all manner ofnstatistical procedures and tests and—nif the tests are favorable—then leapnfrom statistical correlation to socialncausation. But the leap is over a tremendousnchasm, and the ground belownis littered with the nonsense of the ages.nWho Gets Ahead? may be full of impor-n