It is hard to see how the "Beacon Biographies" of eminent Americans (Small, Maynard & Co.) could be easily improved either in plan or in execution. Among the recent issues in this excellent series are sketches of Aaron Burr, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown, by Henry Childs Merwin, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, respectively. The authors of these sketches have been able to use materials published in existing biographies and autobiographies, condensing and rearranging to suit the purposes of the series. Each volume is prefaced by a running chronology embracing all the principal events of the subject's career.