Books: The Editors Like

THE BLACK PRINCEby Shirley Ann Grau. (Knopf, $3.50.) Varied short stories by a young Southerner who writes of her home country with a shrewdness, vitality, and warmth far removed from the madness and magnolias school.

THE SIMPLE TRUTHby Elisabeth Hardwick. (Harcourt, Brace, $3.50.) In describing how a student murder affects a small college town, the author makes interesting comments on the ambiguities of law, justice, and human nature.

THE INNOCENT SAILORby Anne de Tourville. (Farrar, Straus & Young, $3.50.) Simple in outline, this story of a Breton sailor’s wanderings charms with a curious mixture of precise detail and timeless, misty romance.

HIS VERY SELF AND VOICEedited by Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. (Macmillan, $7.50.) The collected reports of his contemporaries prove, in case anybody still has doubts, that Byron was a wonderful fellow, who could claim, like Falstatf, to be not only witty in himself, “but the cause that wit is in other men.”

THE MAD MONARCHby Werner Richter. (Regnery, $5.00.) No backstairs chronicle of royal eccentricity, Mr. Richter’s book is a serious attempt to relate the insanity of Ludwig II of Bavaria to the political situation in nineteenth-century Germany.

GLADSTONEby Philip Magnus. (Dutton, $6.75.) This readable biography demonstrates that there was much more to the great Liberal than a tendency to address Queen Victoria as though she were a public meeting.

THE SOLITARY SINGERby Gay Wilson Allen. (Macmillan, $8.00.) A formidably thorough overhauling of Walt Whitman’s life and works, this critical biography combines fact and interpretative analysis with more than ordinary skill.

THE TEMPLE TIGER AND MORE MAN-EATERS OF KUMAONby Jim Corbett. (Oxford University Press, $3.00.) More of Mr. Corbett’s tales of big cats and Indian villagers, told, as usual, with beguiling simplicity and affection.

THE WHITE DESERTby John Giaever. (Dutton, $5.00.) The adventures, findings, and practical problems of a Norse-British-Swedish scientific expedition to Antarctica.

PORTUGAL AND MADEIRAby Sachevercll Sitwell. (British Book Centre, $4.00.) By concentrating on architecture and botany, Mr. Sitwell has created a pleasantly dreamlike book, devoid of problems and full of lovely word pictures.

HAITI: THE BLACK REPUBLICby Selden Rodman. (Devin-Adair, $5.00.) An enthusiastic admirer of Haiti, Mr. Rodman has written a practical guide book, a brief history, and a love letter, all in one.