Hanover Browsing

OWING TO THE PAPER SHORTAGE, and more important material in the MAGAZINE, Hanover Browsing has been somewhat somnolent lately. However, here are a few recommendations.

I may have mentioned here previously the excellent Smithsonian War Background Studies. These may be procured (I have twenty of them) from the Smithsonian Institution Building, Washington 25, D. C.

For the use of servicemen in the field I can also recommend their two booklets: Survival on Land and. Sea, and A FieldCollector's Manual in Natural History.

Sample titles in the War BackgroundStudies are: Origin of the Far Eastern Civilizations, The Evolution of Nations, ThePeoples of the Soviet Union, Peoples ofthe Philippines, The Japanese. And, thinking of Asia, the best and most reliable book I have read recently is Solution in Asia (Little, Brown & Co., 1945) by Owen Lattimore, son of Dartmouth's Emeritus Professor David Lattimore.

In slightly over two hundred pages Mr. Lattimore shows how inexpert our experts have been, how important it is that we regard Asia with a new point of view (not as if it were Europe), and he concludes "that the time has come to give Asiatic policy a top priority in America's relations with the world."

I consider this book absolutely essential to any American who wants to be well informed on China, Japan and the Far East.

Book collectors as well as those interested in the curious twists sometimes found in human nature will find the Letters ofThomas J. Wise to John Henry Wrenn absorbing reading.

Wise was unquestionably a great book collector, as testified by the Ashley Library he built up, now England's own. But he was, unfortunately, a literary forger as Messers Carter and Pollard's shrewd study proves (An Inquiry into Certain Nine-teenth Century Pamphlets). How clever he was is revealed in these letters, but he was not clever enough. I suppose he might be called the Kreuger of the book world, but he sold his reputation for a paltry sum and proves to have been a very foolish man.

That this gentleman's career (an M.A. Oxon) will prove a lesson to book collectors I am not sure, for as a class they are very gullible, often going quite mad over "points," "dust wrappers," etc. Nevertheless, this is an amusing book; amusing in the sense that any history of the twenties is amusing. Amusing but a little pathetic, too.

Pause To Wonder, edited by Marjorie Fischer and Rolphe Humphries (Messner, 1944), is a better than average anthology of 80 stories and sketches of the marvelous and the strange.

Faces in a Dusty Picture by Gerald ICersh (Whittlesley House, 1945) is an excellent war story of North Africa. Easy to read and it carries the hallmark of simple truth.

Many of the readers of this column must have known Arthur Henry Stein Jr. '43 who was killed in a plane crash in the spring of 1943. For these and others interested in a young man's dreams expressed in poetry I recommend a volume now before me: Of A Hunter, Now! andOther Poems by Arthur Henry Stein Jr., The Argus Press, Albany, New York. Finely printed, and charmingly illustrated by Art's father, Major Stein of the Medical Corps, U.S.A., the book is a fine memorial not only to Arthur but also to many like him who lost their lives before combat. It is a deeply moving and poignant book.

QUARTERDECK HOP QUEEN RECEIVES PRIZE. Her escort, A/S Duncan MacFarlan, Glen Rock, N. J., deftly fastens the bracelet awarded, the 17-year-old Queen, Joan Mattucci, Grantwood, N. J., during the coronation ceremonies at the spring dance.