Books: Long-Hand, Hard Head

LETTERS OF GROVER CLEVELAND—Selected & edited by Allan Nevins—Houghton Mifflin ($5).

A man's letters, written always for an audience but seldom for publication,* are apt to give a better likeness of him than his posed and dressed-up biographical portrait. If he was a good letter-writer, they are better reading. But Grover Cleveland was not a good letter-writer. Says Editor Allan Nevins, whose Life of Cleveland was the 1933 Pulitzer-Prizewinning biography: "It was characteristic of Cleveland that he wrote many letters about public business, few about his personal affairs or personal feelings."

Cleveland wrote...