Hanover Browsing
HERE are a few detective stories you might enjoy:
Herbert Brean: A Matter of Fact (Morrow).
Glynn Carr: Corpse at Camp Two (Bles, London).
Manfred Conté: Jeopardy (Sloane).
George Harmon Coxe: Suddenly aWidow (Knopf).
David Dodge: Angel's Ransom (Random House).
Roy Fuller: Second Curtain (Macmillan).
Andrew Garve: End of the Track (Harper).
Alan Hunter: Gently Does It (Rinehart) and Gently By the Shore (Rinehart).
Howard Mason: Body Below (Michael Joseph, London).
Beverly Nichols: Death to Slow Music (Hutchinson, London).
John Rhode: Delayed Payment (Dodd, Mead).
R. H. Robinson: Landscape With DeadDons (Rinehart).
Simenon: The Judge and The Hatter (Hamish Hamilton, London).
Lionel White: Flight Into Terror (Dutton).
I spent a pleasant weekend with Edwin Way Teale at the meeting of the Thoreau Society in Concord in July, and he showed me spots associated with Thoreau I would never have seen without him. He is, I think, with Mr. Beebe subsiding somewhat, our greatest writer in the naturalistic field. His latest book, Autumn Across America (Dodd Mead, 1956), is well worth your attention. You may recall his volume NorthWith the Spring, which began in Florida and ended in Northern New England. His new book begins on Cape Cod (with memories of Thoreau), crosses the whole continent and ends up and down the West Coast. There are excellent photographs taken by the author, a dog story which will become a classic, and many interesting comments on our country, its people, and its amazing natural richness. There are two other volumes planned. This is a book that will endure.
Farrar, Straus and Cudahy have been publishing an excellent series of "Great Letters." The latest is The Selected Letters of Charles Lamb edited by T. S. Matthews. His introduction is modest (he acknowledges getting most of his information from E. V. Lucas) and his selection judicious. Lamb was, as the editor says, a "chartered egotist." His lifelong devotion to his mad sister Mary will never be forgotten. Neither, I think, will his essays. His letters are a fine accompaniment to them.
Other books in the series are letters of Keats, Cowper, Henry Adams, Thomas Gray, Byron, Flaubert, Chekhov, Henry James, and in preparation: D. H. Lawrence and Lady Montagu (not the one who took Hanover by storm).
Fletcher Pratt's last book, The BattlesThat Have Changed History (Doubleday), is now in my hands. He was a prolific writer and a most competent one. Always interested in the Navy and naval warfare he has here written of great battles on sea and land from the ancient world of the Greeks to Austerlitz, Vicksburg, Trafalgar and Midway. There are 27 maps which aid the reader immeasurably.
For a reasonably priced atlas for your children in school or college, or for your own library, I can recommend Hammond's New Practical World Atlas now published at $2.95 by Hanover House. Full color maps of all the countries in the world plus the 48 states, together with an alphabetical census of all cities and towns over 1,000 population, make this most helpful to anybody interested in his own country and the world. It may be out of date soon but until then I recommend it.
Although I do not agree with all the publicity given to Colin Wilson's book The Outsider, for in many ways it is full of undigested knowledge, nevertheless for most it may well be a revelation. Also interesting is the fact that he is now working on a life of Jack the Ripper, who is also an outsider: the hole-in-the-corner man who doesn't belong. This book made more of a stir in England than it has in America. The significance of this is not without interest.
One of the best volumes in "The Mainstream of America Series" is Irving Stone's long book: Men to Match MyMountains, The Opening of the Far West1840-1900 (Doubleday). Most reviewers have pointed out gaps in the narrative, but without gaps several volumes would have been needed. As it is, there are stories here of Sutter, Fremont, Mark Twain, Brigham Young, the Silver Kings, Tabor and Baby Doe, the Big Four, Huntington, etc.; stories of the Donner Tragedy, gun toters, etc. Stone means by the "Far West" the states of California, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. A lusty book with maps for endpapers.
There has been much written about the Dead Sea Scrolls and now for less than a dollar in the Anchor Books you can find out what is now considered to be the best English translation and the best commentary (up to date) of these rather startling discoveries. Actually I think most scholars agree that we won't have to change our ideas much, if any, about Christ, but the Scrolls do throw some light on early times in the Near East, and so have a permanent value for the scholar and layman.
