=A Maker of History.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, Mass. A book which catches hold of you and takes you right along. It is original in its plot, dramatic in its incidents, absorbingly interesting in its narrative. A young Englishman, by accident, happens to witness a meeting between the Emperor of Germany and the Czar of Russia—a meeting which elaborate precautions had been taken to keep secret. Another accident puts into the possession of the young Englishman a page of the secret treaty between the two Emperors. The scheme of this treaty is that Russia shall give England a _casus belli_, that Germany shall come to the assistance of Russia, and that Great Britain shall be despoiled. The young Englishman is suspected, and his footsteps are dogged by German spies. Later he talks imprudently in a Parisian restaurant, and becomes an object of intense interest to the French Secret Service. He suddenly and mysteriously disappears. His sister arrives in Paris, is astonished at the disappearance of her brother, and starts out to search for him. Then the sister disappears. After a time everything turns out happily for hero and heroine, but in the meanwhile many an event of thrilling interest happens to keep the reader wide awake and wondering what the outcome will be. =The Greatest Trust in the World.= By Charles Edward Russell. The Ridgway-Thayer Company, New York City. This book is made up of the articles which were published in _Everybody’s Magazine_, and which created such a profound impression by their calm, relentless exposure of the most cruel and most lawless and most despotic Trust on earth. Not even the Standard Oil Company grinds the common people as the Beef Trust does, for the latter deals with food products which are indispensable to life, and the Beef Trust can and does say to the people, “Pay my price or die.” The book treats of the might of this monopoly; of the great yellow car, the bandit of commerce; of the manner in which the Trust intimidates the railroads; of the manner in which the Federal Government white-washed the Trust; of the union between rotten business and rotten politics. It is a book that all should study. =American Diplomacy.= By John Bassett Moore. Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York City. My own impression has been that “American Diplomacy” has never amounted to much, and I cannot say that Dr. Moore’s book has convinced me to the contrary. The only apparent triumph of American Diplomacy was the securing of French aid in the Revolutionary War; and as to that most students will agree that “diplomacy” had nothing to do with it. France saw an opportunity to strike at her hereditary foe, Great Britain, and she sent an emissary to the American Congress to drop certain hints which led to the sending of Dean, Lee and Franklin to Paris. Where France was already so eager, “diplomacy” could claim no triumph.