copyright 1951; Houghton Mifflin Company publishers, Boston; hardbound in green boards with gilt lettering on spine; book in quite good condition with unmarked pages and tight binding; front cover has small bump to upper right corner (see pic); no dust jacket.
 
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Bolivar is often called the George Washington of Latin America. In a sense he was that--the military leader in a crusade for freedom and the advocate of a stable government in the newly independent countries. But more profoundly, Washington an the Liberator were as different as their lands and their people. In a deep sense, as this book makes clear, Bolivar is closer to Lincoln: and his great vision of a New World relates him even more to a poet such as Walt Whitman. But Bolivar strove by law and with his sword to enact his vision. This was his greatness--and his tragedy.

Much has been written about the Colombian hero, but never by a major literary artist saturated as is Waldo Frank with the culture of Latin America. No one has examined all the documents with such an unbiased eye; profited so acutely from the brilliant work of Spanish-American scholars; penetrated so profoundly the people, the land, and the civilization from which Bolivar rose. Today with continental solidarity a critical need, we shall do well to read and absorb this brilliant study of America's Prophet.

There is no better way to understand the Latin American than through a study of their greatest hero whose achievement rose from his instinctive identification with his peoples. Mr. Frank has make this clear in a biography in which scholarship, wisdom, and understanding in no wise slow up the dramatic sweep of a great moment in history.