As is the case with most autobiographies of famous or semi-famous people this volume gives the impression that it was written because Bill Hart had nothing better to do. In spite of this fact it is interesting reading, being a simple story of one of the first world famous movie stars which is straightforward enough to avoid the possible criticism that it is the work of some other hand. The mere fact that Hart has already four books to his credit is enough to prove this fact.

The story is in the main a common one. The young struggling actor, born in the middle west, struggles up from a position of practical starvation to the top rung in the movie world. Throughout the whole narration one is struck with the romance of his life. Hart surely saw life through colored glasses and lived it as he saw it. He has retained to the present time that same feeling that makes a small boy delight in the circus, and a great deal of the charm of the volume is due to this fact.

There is a careful avoidance of any attempt on Hart's part to show how he paddled his own canoe, and point a moral to the striving young actor, which is a relief in this type of work. To a large degree the story is a connected series of antidotes of life in the movies.

The book is one which any normal boy of thirteen would delight in, its appeal to an older and more mature person is undoubtedly limited.

The underworld gangs of Chicago, which have come in for so much newspaper comment and publicity in the past few months, are now put between the covers of a novel, and furnish such good entertainment, apparently, that they are the selection of the Literary Guild for their readers in the month of June. "Little Caesar", the first novel of W. R. Burnett, published by the Dial Press, is the new Baedeker to gangland, drawing chiefly on the shady side of the night clubs for its material.