Books: Characters

GENIUS AND CHARACTER—Emil Ludwig—Harcourt, Brace ($3.50). “And what else must we do but trace this man’s every thought and act, every motive and impulse, back to the indivisible elements of his personality?” This is a fine and an austere credo for a biographer. Author Ludwig who followed it so completely and so admirably in his Napoleon, now applies it to a condensed explanation of men whose genius has been exposed in their actions. Da Vinci writing down the wild & enormous range of Nature’s behavior; Stanley voyaging into Africa to find Livingston; Cecil Rhodes thinking of his grave on a windy hill; Rembrandt staring at his face in many mirrors; Byron, Balzac, Shakespeare; and Voltaire writing his thin and bitter curses. These, and many another, pass under Author Ludwig’s swift and penetrating scrutiny. In these brief sketches there cannot be the breadth and totality of detailed biography. But there can be and there is the power and discernment that has made Author Ludwig perhaps the most able contemporary critic of great men.