after entering into the ttaditional familynbonds.nDinner at the Homesick Restaurant isntherefore an exceptional effort withnmemorable characters in highly believablencircumstances. The novel is notnwithout humor, though more of it is atnthe characters’ expense than for theirnenjoyment. Still, the book seems notnentirely fair. Though devoid of the ideo­nInsights intonLong-Forgotten InbrogliosnBruce Allen Murphy: The Brandeis/nFrankfurter Connection; OxfordnUniversity Press; New York.nJordan A. Schwarz: The Speculator:nBernard M. Baruch in Washington,n1917-1965; University of NorthnCarolina Press; Chapel Hill.nby Henry L. Mason IIInJDoth these books describe thenpolitical activities of legendary men,ncover approximately the same timenperiod, and recount several of the samenevents. There, however, the similaritynends; Murphy has turned inherently interestingnmaterial into mush, whilenSchwarz has taken a potentially tediousnsubject and made it glitter.nThe Brandeis/Frankfurter Connectionnshould embarrass both its authornand its publisher; it is well that the intellectualnreputation of the Oxford UniversitynPress does not depend solely on itsneditorship of this book. Murphy tramplesnthe most elementary principles ofnhistorical scholarship, uses source materialnin a way which is at best unorthodox,nand writes in a remarkably soggynstyle for which lumpenjoumdistic is thenmost accurate adjective I can contrive. Itnis characteristic that neither Murphy nornhis six editorial colleagues and “copy-nMr. Mason is an attorney in Chicago.nlogical rhetoric and the self-pity that pervadenso much contemporary fiction, itnnevertheless succumbs to the trendynbelief that life, on the whole, is a prettynunhappy business and that the family,nthrough inherent human imperfection,nis fatally flawed. Sadder still is the factnthat the author, a married woman withntwo children, should feel the need tonportray it as such. Dnreaders” can even spell the wordn”subtly.” The heart of Murphy’s book isnhis claim to evaluate “over three hundred”nletters written by Justice LouisnBrandeis “during the thirties” to FelixnFrankfurter, then a professor at the HarvardnLaw School. These “personalnmissives,” it is alleged, were “kept fromnpublic view” by Frankfurter until hisndeath and now constitute “an importantnkey to understanding the political relationshipnbetween the justice and Frankfurternand in [sic] describing, in fullndetail, the true extent of Brandeis’s extrajudicialnactivities during the NewnDeal.” The rest of the book amounts to anfurther description of Brandeis’s andnFrankfurter’s political activities; Murphynemploys a relentlessly gushing “now-itcan-be-told”nmanner but succeeds, ifnanything, in subtracting from the sum ofnhuman knowledge about both men.nWhen an author repeatedly asserts thatnpreviously “unpublished” and “very revealing”ncorrespondence has producedn”new evidence” which allows a “fullernstory” to be told, it behooves him to atnleast describe, preferably consistently,nthe correspondence to which he refers.nMurphy fails this elementary test. Hentells us, for example:n1. That the number of previouslynunpublished letters is “over” threenhundred. Yet on the back cover of thenbook jacket the Oxford UniversitynnnPress asserts that the number is exactlynthree hundred;n2. That the letters were writtenn”during the thirties” and that then”first” suchletterwaswritten on Apriln16,1930. But Murphy repeatedly implies—fornexample in his discussionnof the Sacco-Vanzetti case—that lettersnfrom a far earlier period werenamong those allegedly concealed;n3. That the letters involved “can benfound in boxes 27, 28 and 29” of thenFelix Frankfurter papers in the ManuscriptnDivision of the Library of Congress.nTo the extent that this statementnis meant to imply that thesenboxes contain nothing but concealedncorrespondence it is false; many of thenletters in the three boxes predate “thenthirties” and at least some have beennpublished before.nMurphy also goes out of his way to tellnus that the suppressed letters were sent bynBrandeis to Frankfurter. Yet he also citesnletters from the same boxes gomg fromnFrankfurter to Brandeis, and it would innfact be surprising if only one side of anbilateral correspondence were “keptnfrom public view.” The result of thesenobscurities is that even the most patientnfootnote-juggling reader cannot begin tondetermine which Brandeis-Frankfurternletters the author claims to be “new.”nThis is important because most of thenbook is a rehash of matters which havenbeen discussed with greater accuracy elsewhere.nAnd when the reader also realizesnthat none of the previously unpublishednletters seem to be quoted in their entirety,nand that crucial words are frequentlynsupplied in brackets by Murphy, it is notnamiss to take a closer look at how Murphynuses his sources.nA revealing example is found in an1943 episode at the War ProductionnBoard, where Murphy turns a routinenbureaucratic power struggle in Byzantium-on-the-Potomacninto a threatenednmilitary putsch foiled only by “thenpolitical infighting skills of Justice Frankfurter.”nInterestingly, the episode alson^ M H H S SnFebruary 1983n