DISRAELI<i> by John Vincent (Oxford University Press: $5.95) </i>

In this stuffy biography, John Vincent traces the motivations behind Benjamin Disraeli’s political actions to passages in his novels, which few people in England, and even fewer in America, still read. Oxford’s “Past Masters” series is supposed to provide “concise, lucid, authoritative introductions to the thoughts of leading intellectual figures of the past whose ideas still influence the way we think today.” But Vincent fails to explain the issues and crises that his subjects faced: Anyone who could follow this stolid account of Disraeli’s career wouldn’t need an introduction to the colorful statesman’s career.