SOURCE: "Life at 65 Wall Street," in The New York Times Book Review, August 18, 1963, p. 4.

Geismar was one of America's most prominent historical and social critics and the author of a multi-volume history of the American novel from 1860 to 1940. Though he often openly confessed that literature is more than historical documentation, Geismar's own critical method suggests that social patterns and the weight of history, more than any other phenomenon, affect the shape and content of all art. In the following review of Powers of Attorney, Geismar describes Auchincloss as a technician in the style of J. D. Marquand and John O'Hara. The critic also finds that the stories are a "very literate and polished kind of entertainment. "

Louis Auchincloss has a neat talent for light fiction. A disciple of Edith Wharton and of Henry James, he deals with the remnants—saving or otherwise—of that "Old New York society...