Hanover Browsing
THOSE who may remember Len Howard's remarkable book Birds As Individuals, which came out in 1952 (Collins, London), will be happy to read her latest book Living With Birds. Whether or not Miss Howard is a genius - if genius means an imaginative capacity to associate apparently unrelated observations and an infinite capacity for taking pains - only time will tell. But certainly she is an intensely original observer, obsessed with the nature of bird personality and gifted with an amazing talent for gaining the confidence of birds. This new book is fully as fascinating as her first one.
Michael Barrett in The Reward (Farrar, Straus) has written an absorbing story of greed. The setting is the Argentine desert. The plot concerns an Englishman named Neale, badly in need of money, who betrays a former Oxford friend wanted for kidnapping and murder and for whom there is a huge reward. The minor characters are all plausibly drawn. The story has tension, works up to a fine end, and there is plenty of action, excitement and atmosphere. This will undoubtedly make a powerful movie.
If you are interested in American history, I can recommend J. Franklin Jameson's The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement. With an introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger, it is reprinted by the Beacon Press for only 85 cents. "Stands as a landmark in recent American historiography, a slender but unmistakable signpost, pointing a new direction for historical research and interpretation."
Sir Harold Nicholson, well-known British scholar, diplomat, Labour M.P., BBC commentator, historian and literary critic, has written an urbane, highly civilized, suave and entertaining book called Good Behaviour. It studies the manners of twelve civilizations from early Chinese through Greek, Roman and the Middle Ages to the present. His comments on the United States are perhaps a trifle condescending, but on the whole are true, tolerant and witty. I wish this could be required reading for all the ill-mannered students (and grown-ups, too, for that matter) in America. Whatever our age may be called later on, it will never be called - and this is a pity - the age of good manners. Doubleday is the publisher.
The book which makes Thoreau most real and alive for the contemporary reader is Henry Beetle Hough's Thoreauof Walden, published by Simon and Schuster. Easy to read, it contained, at least for me, new information, as well as a sympathetic understanding of that great nineteenth century figure whose stature was never greater than now. Highly recommended.
One of our most enlightened political commentators is Richard H. Rovere. In The Eisenhower Years: Affairs of State,1950-1956 he collects together some forty articles which appeared in The NewYorker, The Reporter, etc. They are stimulating, thought-provoking and enlightening. Highly recommended. The publisher is Farrar, Straus, Cudahy.
Books which tell about Arabia, its people, and Arabian nationalism have long fascinated me. I append a list if you want to learn some of the facts of life about the Middle East and its present crisis.
Richard Sanger: The Arabian Peninsula (Cornell, 1954).
H.R.P. Dickson: The Arab of the Desert (Allen and Unwin).
H. St. John Philby: Arabian Highlands (Cornell), Arabian Days (Robert Hale), Arabian Jubilee (Robert Hale).
Bertram Thomas: The Arabs (Doubleday), Arabia Felix (Jonathan Cape).
Freya Stark: A Winter in Arabia (Murray), The Arab Island (Knopf), East IsWest (Murray).
Charles M. Doughty: Arabia Deserta (now an Anchor Book).
Gertrude Bell: Letters of Gertrude Bell (Benn).
T.E. Lawrence: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Doubleday).
Kent Cooper began writing for newspapers sixty years ago and has been for the past quarter of a century the head of The Associated Press. In his newest book The Right to Know he gives an exposition of the evils of government news suppression and propaganda in peace-time and political censorship in war-time. This is a well-informed, courageous book, filled with fresh insights and little-known facts, and interspersed with anecdotes and quick sketches of famous personages.
