Books: Making of a Statesman

FIGHTING LIBERAL—George W. Norris—Macmillan ($3.50).

Eight weeks before he died, last year, in his stucco house in McCook, Neb., the late, great ex-Senator George William Norris finished dictating his autobiography. Fighting Liberal is not a great book. His heroic battles in Congress were no longer vivid in its old (83), tired author's mind. Like many another old man, George Norris at the end was reliving his youth. As the story of a boyhood in the frontier, post-Civil War Midwest, Fighting Liberal is authentic Americana.

Frontier Mother. George Norris' father was a farmer living in...