This book is written primarily for people of moderate means. It aims to show how sad and foolish is the old keeping-up-with-the-Joneses attitude which can spoil the fun of everybody who becomes involved with it. Your entertaining should be yours-not Mrs. Jones's or Mrs. Grundy's or any other extraneous character's. This means that it may involve the expenditure of very little money or quite a lot, but it will remain simple in accordance with today's thinking-and your own, which is the best you can offer anybody.

I have discussed the matter of children at their own parties and at those of adults. It is important that they have opportunities to observe their elders entertaining well so that they may learn in the most nat­ural way to be good hosts themselves. It is also important to know when and how to eliminate them from grown-up situations. For their own parties, there's a whole section based on the plea that you let them make their parties theirs just as you want your own to be yours.

Supplements to this book include The Party Fun Book which gives rules for playing all sorts of games from old standbys to Canasta. This is followed by The Party Cookbook which gives recipes for all dishes suggested in the menus, plus many more. Then comes The Party Drink Book with simple suggestions for the serving of wines as well as making mixed drinks.

Finally, I have made suggestions for special parties, some of which, like weddings, happen once in a lifetime; most, however, being much simpler.

Tradition and custom, all the conventional "party manners" can be found and followed, but the real reason for this book is to bring the whole subject out of the damask and crystal drawing room into the gayer, more informal living room of our own day. Common sense and an open-hearted desire to make people happy are the real basis for the best entertainment, not a rigid code of rules set down years ago in an era that has gone for good.

If this book, which is as complete a discussion and guide as I could make it without a set of commandments, brushes away any foolish qualms about not knowing "the right way" to entertain, then it will have done all I could hope, and you will have as much fun at your own parties as any of your guests