[The] defects that mar most problem political [books for juveniles] are of two kinds—excessive detachment (inability to feel the exciting, promising newness of politics to youth) and excessive righteousness (lack of responsiveness to the humanity, however ignorant, of the benighted opposition). And neither of this season's interesting political juveniles—Nat Hentoff's "In the Country of Ourselves" and Maia Wojciechowska's "The Rotten Years"—is free of one or the other of those defects. (p. 3)

[The] impression left by ["In the Country of Ourselves"] as a whole—namely that politics is boring—is under-nourishing and false.

A nearly opposite failing scars Maia Wojciechowska's "The Rotten Years." The book's heroine, Elsie Jones, is a high school history teacher, a worshiper of Bobby Kennedy and Lecomte du Noüy, a thoroughly passionate activist. Mrs. Jones secures her principal's permission to conduct a 30-day experiment in intensive moral education with one class...