Potpourri

BY PHOEBE ADAMS

RALPH NADER, a lawyer who acted as adviser to the Senate subcommittee investigating automobile hazards, has written UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED (Grossman, $5.95) in the hope of arousing public demand for safer vehicles, through legislation if necessary. Mr. Nader is no sentimental optimist; he does not envision a car that will be proof against idiot driving. Granted a certain amount of idiot driving as inevitable, however, Mr. Nader insists that cars can be built to give the participants in accidents a better chance of survival. His evidence in support of this claim is extensive and convincing, while his list of the dangers knowingly built into cars is blood-chilling. These hazards — and Mr. Nader finds every American motor company guilty of something of the sort — range from a weight distribution that causes the vehicle to turn turtle where a properly balanced machine would not even wobble (Corvair), to tail fins sharp enough to kill a child falling against a parked car (Cadillac). The first case was the result of cheap construction; the second, of excessive and irrelevant ornament. They both boil down to money, to the desire for profit unrestrained by any sense of responsibility toward the public. Mr. Nader finds this state of mind endemic among car makers. The book is unnerving, but should be read by anyone who does not intend to take permanent refuge in a bomb shelter.

NOEL BARBER’S THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA (Houghton Mifflin, $3.95) is not quite formal history, since the author confesses to drawing conclusions for which there is no sure evidence surviving, and to filling in certain gaps in the action. Still, the book is hardly fiction either. Perhaps it can best be described as a reconstructed episode. It concerns the brief scuffle between the East India Company and one SirajUddaula, Nabob of Bengal, which, in 1756, led first to the death by suffocation of more than one hundred English prisoners of war, and second to the annexation of a large chunk of India by the company. The siege of Calcutta, the disgraceful actions of the English officials responsible for its defense, the confusion inside Fort William, and the final disaster make a lively story and incidentally provide a fine example of the dangers of overconfidence.

THE JAGUAR’S CHILDREN (Museum of Primitive Art, $8.95) includes over two hundred photographs of artifacts of the culture of “Pre-Classic Central Mexico.” Primarily, that is, material from the Olmec civilization, which flourished between 800 and 300 B.C. MICHAEL COE’S text is terse and practical, for the most part simply describing the objects and recording their status as either true Olmec or local peasantry under Olmec influence. As for the objects themselves, most of them are enchanting. The pots are neat and functional, the masks wonderfully bizarre, and there is a positive chorus line of pert female figurines. In an area where nothing is definitely known or likely to be, Mr. Coe risks guesswork interpretation of these dolls; he thinks their aboriginal owners thought well of pretty women.

THE FIREBUGS (Knopf, $3.95), by PETER FAECKE, is reported to have been vastly admired in its native Germany. It is indeed impressive work for an author aged twenty-three, an outright marvel of ingenious obliquity. Mr. Faecke’s fragmentary, out-of-sequence narrative style is a shrewd device, for told straight, the story would be one of those glum bucolic melodramas about rape in the cow shed — the sort of thing that inspired that neglected satirical delight Cold Comfort Farm and that still flourishes on Peyton Place.

“A critical appraisal of a famous father is a task not lightly to be undertaken,” T. LUX FEININGER writes in LYONEL FEININGER CITY AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (Praeger, $14.95), and then demonstrates that, however undertaken, he can do it with charm, grace, and insight. The photographs, many in color, are by the author’s brother, Andreas.