In Anger and Ptty

Doubleday, $2.95.

Yet another “report on Russia,” but it has several points of difference from most of its recent predecessors, and all are in its favor. The author, an NBC correspondent expelled from Moscow on charges of espionage, has an intimate understanding of the country and its people: he was born in Russia, speaks the language, and is married to a Russian girl. Mr. Magidoff does not go in for blanket condemnation or pious plugging of free enterprise, nor has he any fellow-traveler leanings. He is keenly interested in the arts, and offers a glimpse of their “sorrowful" condition under official tutelage. Loosely organized but highly readable, his book has some interesting things to say about the contradictions in Russian life, the succession to Stalin, and the Soviet attitude toward war.

The chapter “Emily Post Invades Russia" makes an amusing disclosure: the well-rounded comrade must now have genteel manners and is learning them — from Mrs. Post and the surviving tsarist dowagers.