Books: The Editors Like

The Sweep of Events

LIFE’SPICTURE HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II. (Simon & Schuster, $10.00.) Here is the horror and havoc and high drama of a global war, fixed with incomparable vividness by the camera’s eye. Text by Dos Passos, Robert Sherrod, and others.

THE CAUTIOUS REVOLUTIONby Ernest Watkins. (Farrar, Straus, $5.00.) A detailed, expertly informed, and notably dispassionate appraisal of the achievements and failures of the British Labor Government. By a stall member of the London Economist.

PEKING DIARYby Derk Bodde. (Schuman, $3,75.) An American university professor who knows China well has turned in a thoughtful account of eighteen months spent in Communist Peking.

FIFTY FABULOUS YEARSby H. V. Kaltenborn. (Putnam’s, $3.50.) The dean of radio pundits interweaves history and autobiography in this chronicle of his Wisconsin boyhood, Midwestern newspaper days, and world-wide reporting.

The Essence of Genius

THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN VERSEselected by F. O. Matthiessen. (Oxford University Press, $5.00.) Some readers will regret the inclusion of so many long poems, some will balk at the numerous omissions. Even so, this is probably the best comprehensive collection of American verse available.

NOBLE ESSENCESby Sir Osbert Sitwell. (Atlantic-Little, Brown, $4.50.) Ten portraits of artists and writers, spangled with anecdote and executed with consummate skill. The concluding volume of a great autobiography.

IMPRESSIONISTS AND SYMBOLISTSby Lionello Venturi. (Scribner’s, $5.00.) One of the world’s outstanding authorities on painting discusses with loving care the work of ten modern masters, from Manet to Toulouse-Lautrec. 217 reproductions.

THE MAUGHAM READER. (Doubleday, $5.00.) Two novels in full (The Painted Veil and Christmas Holiday); two plays; fourteen stories; the essay on El Greco; and Maugham’s memorable autobiography, The Summing Up.

GOETHE THE THINKERby Karl Vietor. (Harvard University Press, $4.00.) A compact study of Goethe’s thought, which covers almost every sphere of life and human knowledge.

Living Dangerously

POPSKI’S PRIVATE ARMYby Vladimir Peniakoff. (Crowell, $3.75.) The amazing adventures of a brave man. For three years this amateur soldier led Commando excursions behind the enemy lines in North Africa and Italy. He enjoyed it.

THE GREAT ESCAPEby Lt. Paul Brickhill. (Norton, $3.00.) How seventy-six closely guarded American and British officers tunneled their way to freedom from a German prison camp.

OPERATION CICEROby L. C. Movzisch. (Coward-McCann, $2.75.) “Astonishing" is a puny epithet for this true story of espionage in Ankara. In 1944 the British Ambassador’s valet sold Germany the Allies’ top secrets — and the Nazis never acted on them!