THE POOR ROCKEFELLERS

The author of this autobiography is a grandson of a cousin of the founder of that Rockefeller branch you're thinking of. Named John D. by his parents, he later changed his initial to W.--for the obvious reason. Even so, he has spent a lifetime in the unenviable role of ""the wrong Rockefeller"". The adjective in the title, however, is at best relative; he has spent a most comfortable, if unexceptional, life; winters in Europe as a child at the beginning of this century; college days at MIT; and ever since a career as an engineer, specializing in the manufacture of steel springs. The book is an interminable string of personal anecdotes. It is not without charm or interest at some points, but its manner is hopelessly arch, and there are absolutely no hills or valleys--every incident, large and small, has precisely the same value and treatment. This rather winsome amateurishness must effectively limit readership to friends and relatives of the author, and to the few curiosity seekers who will sample it and come away disappointed.