A distinct contribution and a distinct disappointment. The amount of research into the most diverse authorities is remarkable. For chapter after chapter practically every sentence is annotated by reference to the authority from which the fact is culled. The earlier chapters are relatively full, and even laboriously worked out. The early methods of compensation, of torture, of banishment, transportation, etc., are fully treated--but almost entirely from the standpoint of English experience. Rarely does one find so pretentious a book so insular in its actual scope. The student desirous of knowing how penal methods developed in France, or Germany, or the United States would be at sea, save for the most occasional reference. And when we come to the developments of the English penal system itself since the 70’s of the last century, we obtain little. The reader, ignorant of recent English development, would be very unclear at the end. There is little about the treatment of juvenile adults, the Borstal system, the preventive detention plan, the development of the work for discharged prisoners, and other important and almost epoch-making innovations. In short, instead of having a book that, on the basis of past penal methods, studies illuminatingly the most recent developments, we have a book of distinct value for early English penal history. O. F. L. * * * * * _Causes and Cures of Crime._--Thomas Speed Mosby. C. V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1913. Pp. 354. Because the “cost of crime in the United States now amounts to one-third the total cost of the Government, and because the burden is yearly increasing”, Mr. Mosby has made a careful compendium of the statements of many authorities, including his own opinions, on the subject of the book. The reader finds the little volume a useful manual. Etiology, prophylaxis, and therapeutics are the logical divisions of the subject. The specialist will find little that is new; the student will be grateful to Mr. Mosby for getting so much together in available form. Like most writers of today, the author has little use for the traditional penitentiary system. The book is not a quick, hastily-compiled potpourri of what other people happen to say; it is a carefully selected collection of material that we all want to have handy. And what Mr. Mosby himself contributes is not a small part of the product. O. F. L. * * * * * _Beating Back._--Al Jennings and Will Irwin. Appleton’s, New York, 1914. Pp. 355.