In America the status of hero—durable, full-fledged hero—has been awarded to few men. The subtle, complex factors that have led us to be so selective were brilliantly described three decades ago m a book, The Hero in America, by historian Dixon Weder. For a reissue of this book, which will be published later this month by Charles Scribner’s Sons, novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren has written an introduction examining Mr. Wecter’s categories for glorification and speculating about who today—in this present age. of the “Anti-Hero” or the “Slob-as-Hero”—might be candidates for future canonisation. AMERICAN HERITAGE is proud to publish Mr. Warren’s thoughtful and witty introduction to this classic work of history.

Dixon Wecter’s Hero in America appeared in 1941, on the eve of our entry into World War n, but now, three decades later, no book could be more relevant—more disturbingly relevant—to our national condition. In 1941 the “heroes” Mussolini and Hitler (along with their brother-hero Stalin, who happened to wind up on our side) dominated Europe and, as though with the morning sun of a new world-day at the back, cast their enormous shadows across the Atlantic. Could we produce a brand of heroism to stand against the apparently invincible, and inevitable, European product?

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