Books: The Editors Like

A TREASURY OF YIDDISH STORIES edited by Irving Unite and Eliezer Greenberg. (Viking, $5.95.) Formal literature is a fairly recent development in Yiddish, but its accomplishment is already impressive. The editors have provided helpful notes on the authors and on the world of the East European Jews which the stories largely describe.

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MODERN AMERICAN HUMOR edited by Bennett Cerf. (Hanover House, $3.95.) A well-chosen cross section of comic prose and verse, not, to mention unexpected odds and ends from the theater, vaudeville, radio, and the editor’s memory.

A TREASURY OF IRISH FOLKLORE edited by Padraic Gob mi. (Crown, $5.00.) By cannily denying that he is a folklore scholar, Mr. Colum has issued himself license to include as folklore practically anything that takes his fancy — a system that makes an unorthodox and delightful collection.

SIDEWALKS OF AMERICA edited by It. A. Botkin. (Bobbs-Merrill, $5.95.) A little of everything about American cities and what goes on in them; not quite the folklore the author claims it is, but, thoroughly engaging.

THE KILL by Emile Zola. (Farrar, Straus & Young, $3.75.) An early work, previously not easily available in translation; and if the book is not one of Zola’s major works, it is still a powerful, fast-moving study of sexual and financial swindling in the disorderly Paris of the Second Empire.

THE RED PETTICOAT by Bryan MaeMahon.(Dutton, $3.00.) Twenty short stories on a variety of themes, held together by their Irish setting and the author’s subtle style and wryly romantic viewpoint.

THE OTHER PLACE by J. B. Priest ley. (Harper, $3.00.) A collection of unusual stories, written by an expert, which have to do with the supernatural and the power of hallucination in men’s lives.

HADRIAN’S MEMOIRS by Marguerite Yourcenar. (Farrar, Straus & Young, $4.00.) Cast in the form of a letter from the aging emperor to his seventeen-year-old grandson, this prize-winning novel is a scholarly reconstruction of Hadrian s life, times, and complex character. A leisurely, coolly meditative, and distinguished book.

SIX GREAT MODERN SHORT NOVELS. (Dell 50¢) This formidable collection, which includes Faulkner, Joyce, Melville, Gogol, Katherine Anne Porter, and Glenway Wescott, is top level all the way, a rare thing in such enterprises.

AVON ROOK OF MODERN WRITING edited by William Phillips anti Philip Rahv. (Avon, 50c.) Stories by Mary McCarthy and Alberto Moravia are the high points in Avon’s second book of previously unpublished fiction, poetry, and criticism.

NEW WORLD WRITING, sixth Mentor Selection. (New American Library, 50c.) Another lively anthology of contemporary writing from various countries, some of it experimental, all of it worth attention.