Bridges to the World: Henry Noble Maccracken and Vassar College

BRIDGES TO THE WORLD offers a fascinating account of the extraordinary life and times of Henry Noble MacCracken. Dr. MacCracken served as president of Vassar College for thirty-one years, beginning in 1915, and his influence far exceeded the confines of the campus. He fostered a host of educational ideas that impacted the larger educational world. When he died in 1970, The New York Times noted his pioneering efforts in "the fight to abolish academic formalism." MacCracken radically changed the "town-gown relations" between Vassar and the college's Hudson Valley neighbors, prompting Franklin Roosevelt to say, "Until MacCracken came to the college, Vasssar might just as well have been a thousand miles away."