The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-01

cuts through and vision takes hold-Mr. William Mathews lunges forward eager for contact and consummation. He will not be denied. He becomes stronger than the strongest--the sign, Private No Thoroughfare" is not for him.
 Big Bill' Mathews is bound to live. His life is one of absorbing interest. He does big things, he almost fails, but through it all one realizes that he is absolutely true to life he exists. He is not a shadowy hero whose career is sketched in impossible colors upon old canvas. but a vital reality out of ex- isting conditions and drawn with massive strokes across a canvas of present-day things. "The Road to Ambition" is a very interesting, vital, sort of story, and has already won favor with discriminate ing readers of fiction.
 NO MANS LAND"
 By "sapper." George H. Doran conn
 pany, publishers, New York.
 He is a soldier, "Sapper," if you please, who writes of war, not as it af- fects men in the mass. but as it af fleets the individual plucked from life, smooth or rough and whrled into in- describable tests and endurances.
 And, throughout, this intimate pic- ture of the welter of blood and mud by which the world is being regen- erated is lit by the gaiety and sud- den hun1or that have made "sapper" famous
 This is the fourth book by the au- thor of Michael Cassidy, Sergeant" and Men, Women and Guns" who has been called the foremost literary genius of the British army" and has been compared to the early Kipling.
 THE UNHOLY THREE" By c. A. Robbins. The John Lane com-
 pany, publishers, New York.
 Here is a novel by a new hand; new Kind of adventure tale possess ing authentic, absolute originality.
 MT Robbins is another Hawthorne without his melancholy, and at times suggests Poe; but there is a health about his weirdness a belief in beau. ty and sanity as the norm of things, an utter absence of morbid wallowing in horrors for their own sake.
 In fantistic manner MT. Robbins has depicted the career of three men on whom nature had played sorry trick --Tweedle- dee, the draf who dreamed of greatness and longed to be a man or gigantic stature; Hercules, tha giant, who was devoid of all ambi- tion and Echo, mentally deficient but endowed with wonderful voice and ventrloquistic powers, These three ons day broke loose from the circus in which they were being exhibited and. taking Adventure by the hand went out to see the world This strange partnership of three-Body, Mind and Voice-established itself in the midst of normal people, and wrought many weird and startling things
 MARCHING MEN"
 By Sherwood AndersOn Tho Tahn
 Lane company, publishers. New
 York
 Tn reviewing Windy McPherson's Son the Chicago Evening Post ac- claimed Sherwood Anderson, "a new, fresh. clean and virtue spirit in American literature,' and other lead- ing critics pronounced the novel lone Of the 10 best books of fiction to be published in 1916" Marching Men" promise of his first work of fiction.
 Although dealing with a time of peace, it is study of the war spirit as applied to civic life. "Beaut" Me Gregor, son of a miner brought up in mining town, began even as child to hold in contempt the shiftless. thriftless inhabitants of the hideous town in which he was born and as he grew older he conceived the idea thdt lueH marching shoulder to shout der in time and unison were both symbolical of and inspirational to- wards the realization of his dream of a united labor force-something or ganized and definite that would satis- factorily accomplish the worlds work. The story of how he organized. how his idea caught fire and spread throughout the country. how inc heart of the two women who loved him were all but trampled beneath the marching feet, makes a book of tense and unusual interest
 OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED fRE-
 VIEWED LATER)
 UNDER BOY SCOUT COLORs." Rv Joseph B. Ames. Illustrated by Walt Louderback The Century company. publishers, New York
 THE STORY BOOK OF SCIENCE By Jean Henri i-Fabre. (Translated by Florence Constable Bucknell.) The Century company, publishers, New York.
 THE BOYS BOOK OF SPORTS. !" Edited by Grantland Rice. Illustrated. The Century company, publishers New York.
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