Charles L. Chute was executive director of the National Probation and Parole Association for many years. He began this book shortly after his retirement but died before he could finish it. Miss Marjorie Bell, assistant director of the National Probation and Parole Association and the editor of its magazine, Focus, completed it. Anyone who has worked on another’s unfinished manuscript knows the difficulties she faced. Miss Bell, however, has done an admirable job. The book contains an cxcellent introduction by Roscoe Pound whose interest in probation is well known. The book is an accurate and gripping history of probation and its development. But it is much more than this. Chute’s and Bell’s own views are cxpressed, sometimes vehemently. The book’s opening sentence is typical and startling. It might even alarm the uninitiated. It reads : “Threading through the history of civilization, the trail of pursuit and punishment of the law-breaker, is almost as bloody as the trail of crimes committed.” The first chapter vividly recites the ferocious punishments applied, until recently, under the Anglo-American systems of criminal sanctions. In this connection Chute and Bell note that flogging, both of adults and children, under court order in England was not finally abolished until 1948, and that the whipping post is still legal in Delaware and Maryland. The authors point out the often repeated truism that severity defeats its own purpose. Succeeding chapters deal with the development of probation in England and in the United States. Early plans for the humanizing of criminal penalties arose first in England. Systems of recognizance and transportation were created. The authors point out that individual social treatment of criminals was first employed in the cases of children and youthful first offenders and that early in the nineteenth century English magistrates themselves experimented with a rudimentary probation system to avoid sending young and inexperienced offenders to prison. Vide, Matthew Davenport Hill, the famous Recorder of Birmingham, who in 1841 employed parents and masters of apprentices as probation officers. It was not until 19o7 that Massachusetts organized the first official probation service in the United States. The Massachusetts system was studied by Parliament and served as the basis for a bill introduced into the House of Commons in 1907. Crime, Courts and Probation lays emphasis on the very able work done by John Augustus, the pioneer in probation work in this country. This remarkable man first took under his care only men charged with drunkenness. Later he supervised both men and women charged with other offenses. Augustus’ work was entirely voluntary and carried on at his own expense. A very considerable portion of the book is devoted to the work of Chute and others in securing the enactment of the Federal Probation Act. Anyone who has worked with Congress will find these chapters intensely interesting. They demonstrate Chute’s tenacity when he desired to put a fine idea into effect. It is interesting to note that even as late as 1919 there were judges who felt that pro-