SHORT BIOGRAPHIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22819, 28 August 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES

SPLENDID NEW SERIES . A new cheap series of short biographies has been inaugurated by the Hogarth Press under tho 'title of "World-Makers and World-Shakers." Each volume is slim enough to :be slipped into the pocket and may be read in an hour and a-lialf. The purpose of tho series appears to bo to explain in as simple a manner as possible exadtly who certain figures in the world's history, were and what they did. This purpose is achieved with admirablo success in the initial volumes. The knowledge-seeker will gain from Mr. • L. B. Pekin's sketch of Charles Darwin a clearer and truer impression of Darwin, both as a man and as a scientist, and of tho great work which he accomplished, than from many of the longer biographies. Within the pages of one volume Miss Marjorie Strachey covers tho careers of thoso "three great Italian patriots of last century, Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour, and in doing so gives an efficient outline of an important phase of Italian history between 1830 and 1870. Qthcr titles in tho series already issued are "Socrates," by Naomi Mitchison and R. H. S. Crossman and "Joan of Arc," by Y. Sackville-West. These volumes are a product of this remorseless age of speed but they are, nevertheless, products of good quality.