The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 78, July 1974 - April, 1975 Page: 352

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

and literary productions, because he was both a writer and an editor during
part of his life. All of his writings were church related. He was the editor of
Texas Methodist Quarterly, a journal published only in seven numbers, and
now very elusive to librarians and collectors.
The essay by J. Frank Dobie on Shettles is used as an introduction. Thus
the book is also a Dobie item. Dobie states that Shettles was no tin horn
but a well-known gambler. A giant of a man, six feet five inches in height,
he also became a giant as a preacher and as a bookman. Shettles, however,
only detailed his life as a minister and wrote in generalities about his
gambling and his book acquisitions and sales. Poker aficionados will regret
that he did not give details of some of his big games, and book sellers and
collectors will mourn his failure to discuss his book deals. He did throw in
one mindboggler. He once bought Reid's Tramp for $4.5o and sold it to
Henry Wagner for $ o.
Texas A&M University FREDERICK S. WHITE, SR.
Antonio Caso y su impacto cultural en el intelecto mexicano. By Delia
Leanor M. Sutton. (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press,
1974. Pp. I Io. Illustrations, notes, index. $4.00.)
Antonio Caso (1883-1946) was a remarkably versatile figure. Philoso-
pher, diplomat, poet, sociologist, editor, he exercised a significant influence
on the intellectual climate of Mexico and became, in his lifetime, a kind
of national "culture hero." Professor Sutton's book sketches Caso's life,
writings, and bibliography. Brief, accurate sketches of each of Caso's books
are provided, and an unusually complete bibliography is given. The author
thereby provides a reliable, workmanlike account of Caso's thought.
A sort of muted hero worship pervades this book. No concerted attempt
is made to unravel the threads of Caso's philosophy or to confront the
thought of "El maestro de maestros" with contemporary philosophical
trends. National figures may or may not be of universal significance; one
therefore feels the need for some assessment of their international value
alongside the ritual encomiums. Equally, one would appreciate some gen-
eral assessment of the times through which such figures lived, and the rele-
vance of their thought to those times. Antonio Caso y su impacto en el
intelecto mexicano, curiously, provides only minimal insight into such fac-
tors. The title notwithstanding, one would like to know more about Caso's
impact, and how it relates to the (very serious) problems and attitudes of
contemporary Mexico.

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