Books: Tireless Liberal

FIGHTING YEARS — Oswald Garrison Villard—Harcourt, Brace ($3.75).

So many biographies of reformers have recently appeared that it may become an open question whether their work was ever as important as their books about it. But for Oswald Garrison Villard, owner for 15 years of The Nation, and tireless champion of civil liberties, no such question is possible. Son of the builder of the Northern Pacific, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, friend of liberals big and little, Villard has more than most of the autobiographers to write about, if the criterion were staying power,...