A handful of sketches about a handful of famous Americans, as diverse as Thomas Paine and Benjamin Butler. The title of the collectioa is a dead give-away, namely that this Author considered these men to have been somehow deformed, intellectually or morally, and thus incapable of doing much more than making trouble. Bradford himself was a highly opinionated writer, and conservstive even for his times. Still he was a fine stylist, and had a knowledge of historical sources which would shame the popular historians of our own day. ( )