THE ROAD BACK TO PARIS

by A. J.Liebling '24. Doubleday, Doran if Co., Inc.;1944; 300 pages; $3.00.

Liebling loves prizefighters and prizefights; as far as I can see he likes a lot of things. He writes best of humans who are interesting.

As everyone knows he is a writer for the New Yorker. That, in itself, would be enough to recommend this book. But this story of "the world knocked down," and the "world on one knee," and "the world gets up" far transcends the New Yorker, if one means by the New Yorker a magazine which is witty and sometimes wise. Liebling here writes of the highlights in human behaviour shown by men in both high and low positions; of men in France, England, and North Africa under great stress and strain. He writes not only well but with humility and with great honesty.

Liebling doesn't crowd himself into every page. He is unobtrusive but he has the sure eye of a fine reporter. I think it is the most entertaining, if not the most important, book I have read by a war correspondent. He ends on an optimistic note.

It is practically impossible to drag anything out of Liebling personally. He is shy, untalkative, and perhaps bored with the questions of those who have not yet realized the importance of what goes on. But he is not shy in his writing. Reading him is as if one had been with him in Paris just before the Germans came in, in London during the Blitz, in a Norwegian tanker coming home (this is magnificent), and in North Africa with the Bendixes from Brooklyn. He gets the finer shades, and the nuances of human behavior. He shows his sympathies but on the whole remains objective. This is a fine book and I hope you will buy and read it.