Books: Reformer's Letters

THE LETTERS OF LINCOLN STEFFENS —Edited by Ella Winter & Granville Hicks—Harcourt, Brace ($10).

Lincoln Steffens' Autobiography was published in 1931, became an immediate best-seller despite Depression, its price of $7.50 and the fact that its author, then 65, had been virtually forgotten. By 1938 it has sold 94,577 copies, and is generally accepted as the definitive account of: 1) the great reform movement that swept the U. S. before the War, 2) the birth of modern magazines, 3) the dilemma of liberals facing such post-War phenomena as Fascism and the Russian Revolution....