MAXIMILIAN, EMPEROR OR MEXICO

Follows close on the heels of Bertita Harding's Phantom Crown (Bobbs-Merrill page 226), and is an excellent supplement to that general biography of the ill-fated couple. This is an intimate, close-up picture of Maximilian, during his tragic years in Mexico, written by the Mexican youth who was his private secretary, and who has here given his impressions of the man and the setting he created for himself and his empress, Carlotta. Abounds in colorful detail -- gives substance to the man himself -- attempts in no way to place him in relation to the problems of these troubled days in Europe or to explain the failure of his mission, in the light of Maximilian or the external forces which brought about his ruin. If viewed from this angle and this angle alone, it has a fascination all its own. But as a rounded picture of Maximilian, or as a critical study of the doomed project, it is disappointing. Sell as a supplement to larger pictures, as an intimate, uncritical portrait, not as a definitive biography.