MY HERO

From the vantage point of his middle seventies, Donald R. Richberg, a Chicago-Washington lawyer who worked in some capacity for every President from Theodore Roosevelt to Truman, writes an autobiography to which he refers as ""rambling reminiscences"". Rambling it is, and extremely personal; the author is not afraid of such remarks as ""being at the time a conspicuous public figure"", nor of many tasteless passages on the frailties of his first two wives which led to divorce, and again he is willing to dwell at length on the big jobs he almost had. Richberg is at his best when he deals with objective history; his account of the Bull Moose days, of the early Progressives with whom he shared a crusading spirit for social reform is interesting. He records, if too hastily, such important periods as his counselship of the NRA. But the final note is one of disappointment and disillusion of which the title is an ironic indication. He now believes that the nation has moved too close to socialism, and that he might have been a hero had he devoted his public career towards furthering individual liberty.... Richberg writes without much style, nor does he have the sympathetic appeal or even the hot-pepper personality of his one time law partner, Ickes- but it adds to the panorama of 20th century politics.