Books: The Editors Like

FAMILY KINGDOMby Samuel Woolley Taylor. (McGraw-Hill, $3.50). Life with Father, Father’s six adoring wives, and thirty-five brothers and sisters. This is the extraordinary story of the Mormon Apostle John W. Taylor, who refused to give up plural marriage after his Church renounced it.

SALAD DAYSby Bellamy Partridge. (Crowell, $3,50.) The latest installment of Mr. Partridge’s unchronological autobiography is a cheerful, nostalgic memory book of the 1890s, when, as a collegian, his serious concerns were the height of his collar and the drape of his seven-button coat.

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCEby Vladimir Nabokov. (Harper, $3.00.) A stylish and delightful memoir of boyhood in the home of a distinguished liberal leader of pre-revolutionary Russia.

THE MAESTROby Howard Taubman. (Simon & Schuster, $5.00.) Mr. Taubman has written a first-rate account of the fascinating career of Arturo Toscanini. Rich in anecdote, free of musical jargon, and based on close acquaintance with the Maestro.

HENRY JAMESby F. W. Dupee. (Sloane, $4.00.) In contrast to so many of the books about James, Mr. Dupee’s critical biography has the distinction of having a singularly balanced perspective and of not seeking to complicate his subject’s complexity. It is compact, lucid, and gracefully written.

CHARLIE CHAPLINby Theodore Huff. (Schuman, $4.50.) Along with a fully documented chronicle of Chaplin’s life, loves, and legal and political embarrassments, Mr. Huff offers a meticulous study of the Chaplin films. The magic of Chaplin’s art rather eludes Huff’s clinical analysis, but it speaks for itself in the book’s 150 stills from the movies.

DAMNED OLD CRANK: Self-Portrait of E. W. Scrippsedited by Charles R. McCabe. (Harper, $3.50.) An extraordinary autobiography by one of America’s greatest newspaper publishers, dictated during his years as an ocean-going recluse aboard his yacht.

THEY CAME TO BAGHDADby Agatha Christie. (Dodd, Mead, $2.50.) A highly skilled mystery story writer turns to espionage and international intrigue. The results are excellent. Victoria Jones, bird-brained stenographer, is a welcome change from the excessively brainy Hercule Poirot.

THE IVORY DAGGERby Patricia Wentworth. (Lippincott, $2.50.) Still coughing her little cough and clicking her knitting needles, Miss Silver does it again. (So could anyone else with so fortunate a witness as young Frederick proved to be.)

MURDER GOES TO PRESSby Cicely Cairns. (Macmillan, $2.50.) A genuine puzzler, uncommonly well written. The demise of an ogreish feature editor in a thoroughly plausible Fleet Street situation.

THE CASE AGAINST BUTTERFLYby Gregory Tree. (Scribner’s, $2.50.) One after another, the participants in The Case tell their own stories of what happened. This very original form achieves a rattling good story, just about guessproof.