This is a highly readable, episodic account of the history of Maryland. Part of the States and the Nation series issued in honor of the American Bicentennial, the author points out that he was limited to two hundred pages. Fearing that trying to generalize and condense all pertinent facts would "sound like the Encyclopedia Britannica on a gray day", Bode chose to create what he describes as a "mosaic", focusing on a few individuals and "grouting" their stories with connecting facts. He quotes from a colonial prospectus urging settlers to come to an Edenic colony, an indentured slave who became one of the wealthiest men in Maryland, a pioneer of the then wild West, a Eastern Shore waterman-turned-preacher, crooked politicians, and his beloved H.L. Mencken, and the growth of the planned communities of Greenbelt and Columbia. The style makes the book less dated than a more conventional history would be.

The reader will not learn when the first settlers arrived on the Ark and the Dove, will get a real sense of the personality of the state. ( )