Books: First Caesar

FREEDOM, FAREWELL!—Phyllis Bentley —Macmillan ($2.50).

HAIL, CAESAR!—Fletcher Pratt—Smith & Haas ($3.50).

With the same workmanlike technique she used in her novels of Yorkshire mill-towns, Phyllis Bentley last week turned back 2,000 years, retold the old story of Julius Caesar, his rise and fall. Though her version lacked the imaginative freshness of such historical novels as Robert Graves's on the Emperor Claudius or Lion Feuchtwanger's on Josephus, and neither added to nor subtracted from history's blackboard, it furnished modern readers with a stirring, up-to-date account of one of Rome's greatest true stories. Author...