Books: Hotel Man

CÉSAR RITZ—Mme Marie Ritz—Lippincott ($3.5).

Cesar Ritz was a Swiss peasant who at 17 became a waiter in a Paris restaurant. Fifteen years later he was managing the most luxurious hotels in Europe. By the 90s when the Hotel Ritz opened in Paris, he had made himself a Pied Piper to royalty and the international upper crust, and had given the world the adjective "ritzy." But for most readers the big news in his 70-year-old widow's biography will be that he really existed.

An anecdotal parade of Ritz's ritzy friends and of his famous...