Book Excerpts

To Live Without Certitude: Dialogues of Whitehead

Philosopher, author, and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead was born in England in 1861, taught long, full years at Cambridge University and at the University of London, and brought his career to a golden sunset at Harvard. He was one of the most illuminating conversationalists of our time. After his retirement, his talk was confined to a few intimates, of whom LUCIEN PRICE was one. Mr. Price, the author of We Northmen and Winged Sandals, has recorded with the discipline and accuracy of a trained journalist the audacity and the probing of the philosopher’s mind in his new book, Dialogues of Whitehead, which is shortly to be published. His record of the conversations was read and authorized by Whitehead. The Atlantic is proud to present three characteristic excerpts from this book, which has been more than a decade in preparation.

The Violins of Saint-Jacques

A wandering Englishman whose gift of languages and whose audacity remind one of Lawrence of Arabia, PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR was the British Commando who during the war commanded the operation which ambushed, captured, and evacuated General Kreipe, German Commander of the Sebastopol Division in Crete. His book, The Traveller’s Tree, a journey through the Caribbean Islands, was awarded the Heinemann Foundation Prize for 1950 and a Kemsley Prize. Now from that same rich and storied background comes this gay short novel, of which this is the second of three installments.

I Like to Be a Stranger

The most eminent philosopher in the Western world, GEORGE SANTAYANA has been living and writing for some years at the Convent of the Blue Nuns in Rome. His first work of philosophy, The Sense of Beauty, was published in 1896; his latest, Dominations and Powers, in 1951. In between he has been working on his memoirs, two volumes of which have already appeared — in part in the Atlantic — and from the third of which, In the Old World, we are happy to draw this independent chapter, written in Italy in 1942.

Dance to the Piper

This is the fourth installment of the Atlantic’s abridgment of AGNES DE MILLE’S autobiography, Dance to the Piper. Our serial comprises only about a third of the rich and spirited book which is to be the February selection of the Literary Guild. The granddaughter of Henry George and the daughter of William de Mille, the playwright, Miss de Mille had a long but not inglorious fight as she struggled to establish herself first as a dancer and then as a choreographer of American ballet. Pavlova started her on her course; she studied at the Kosloff School, composed her own dances before she was twenty, made her New York debut (but could get no steady backing), worked for six years in England under Marie Rambert with Hugh Laing as her partner. Then, with her European reputation made, she came home to renew her efforts on the American stage. With her ballet Rodeo, she scored the first of what were to be a series of successes in Oklahoma!, Bloomer Girl, Brigadoon, and Allegro.

Living Under the Shadow

This is the first of a series of articles by distinguished doctors who have learned to live with incurable disease. HENRY E. SIGERIST. M.D., one of the great medical historians of our time, was director of the Institute of the History of Medicine at Leipzig from 1925 to 1932. whence he was called to Johns Hopkins. There he remained until his retirement because of hypertension. At present Dr. Sigerist lives in Switzerland, where he is completing his eight-volume History of Medicine, of which the first volume was published in 1951 by the Oxford University Press. The article which follows is from the book When Doctors Are Patients. In subsequent issues use shall hear from Dr. Fredric Wertham, the late Dr. Abraham Myerson, and others.

Dance to the Piper

Dance to the Piper

A choreographer and dancer whose ballets in Oklahoma!, Bloomer Girl, Brigadoon, and allegro have brought a new quality to the American stage, AGNES DE MILLE had a long row to hoe before she could establish herself as a dancer and break through the callous resistance of Broadway. The granddaughter of Henry George, and the daughter of If illiani de Mille, the playwright, she would not accept her initial defeats in New York, and it was in the London theater of Marie Rambert that she first enjoyed sustained recognition before a critical British public. The art and the discipline of a choreographer came later, and again it was in a foreign company, the Ballet Russe, that she projected her first great ballet, Rodeo, dancing the lead in it at the Metropolitan on the opening night. This is the second of four installments from her warm, spirited book. Dance to the Piper.

Why I Founded the u.p.: A Self-Portrait of E. W. Scripps

The Scripps-Howard newspapers are known throughout the land, but few Americans have the least knowledge of Edward Wyllis Scripps, their founder, who withdrew entirely from the public scene ns the power and wealth of his papers mounted. He died, an ocean-going recluse, aboard his yacht, the Ohio, in Monrovia Bay. Liberia, in 1926. During his years aboard the Ohio Scripps dictated an extraordinary autobiography which has been edited by his son-in-law, C. R. MCCABE, and which is being published by Harper under the title Damned Old Crank.From this book the Atlantichas selected the following characteristic episode.

The Education of a Poet

Poet and historian, PETER VIERKCK earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1942, served for four years in the Army, and has since taught history, first, at Smith College and now at Mount Holyoke. A Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, he has published two poetry books with Scribner’s, Terror and Decorum and Strike Through the Mask, and two volumes of prose. Metapolities (Knopf) and Conservatism Revisited (Scribner’s). Parts of this essay are drawn from his study of the mid-century revolt in poetry in the symposium The Arts in Renewal, which the University of Pennsylvania Press will publish this spring.

Mamba's Daughter

ETHEL WATERS is a great Imerican artist, but few who saw the triumph that she scored as Hugar in Mamba’s Daughters realized how closely that play touched on her own life. Ethel had been married, separated, and was on her own at thirteen. It seventeen she made her first professional appearance as a blues singer: in 1933 she starred in Irving Berlin’s As Thousands Cheer: in 1938 her song recital filled Carnegie Hall; and a year later she made her unforgettable hit on the legitimate stage. Her autobiography, of which this is a part. she has told with CHARLES SAMUEELS. an ex-police reporter, magazine writer, and novelist: entitled His Eye Is on the Sparrow. it is published by Doubleday and is a Book-of -theMonth Club selection for March.