Books: Autumn Leaves

THURBER’S DOGS, by James Thurber (294 pp.; Simon & Schuster: $3.95), are certainly the most lovingly regarded dogs in U.S. literature. Whether he draws them or writes about them, Thurber does it with the air of a man who knows what it is to lead a dog’s life. A collection of pieces and pictures sometimes as affecting as they are funny.

THE PIPE, by Georges Herment (164 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $4.95), is an amusing, discursive history of pipes and pipe smoking. Care and cleaning, seasoning, choice of tobacco, how to fill and then empty the bowl, are all gone into with light seriousness—and sometimes almost with mysticism. In an introduction, British Humorist Stephen (Lifemanship) Potter explains about pipemanship, e.g., “practiced pipe smoking is capable of making a cigarette smoker seem flustered and untidy, particularly if [he] maintains a long worm of ash messily drooping from his cigarette.”

How FAR THE PROMISED LAND, by Walter White (244 pp.; Viking; $3.50), finished just before Author White’s death last spring, is a sensible, optimistic report on the progress made by Negroes during the past 15 years. White, for years director of N.A.A.C.P., calmly noted that “we are on our way.”

THREE YEARS WITH GRANT, by Sylvanus Cadwallader (353 pp.; Knopf; $4.75), though written in the 18905, has until now escaped the publishing industry’s hunger for Civil War books. The author was a Northern correspondent with Grant’s headquarters 1862-65. His easy, intimate description-of Grant as man and soldier contributes a candid, fresh view of the Union commander.

EPISODE IN THE TRANSVAAL, by Harry Bloom (295 pp.; Doubleday; $3.95), is an authentic novel about South Africa, in which a self-righteous white superintendent snaps his bureaucratic whip once too often in a native “location.” Johannesburg Lawyer-Novelist Harry Bloom, who jars the conscience by way of the solar plexus, all but makes audible the “roar of the lion” in 12,000 black throats.

ROBERT BENCHLEY, by Nafhaniel Benchley (258 pp.; McGraw-Hill; $3.95), is a son’s biography of one of the funniest men the U.S. ever produced. No chip off the old block, son Nathaniel rather unsuccessfully relies on love and anecdotes to do what few writers have ever been able to achieve: a funny book on the anatomy of another man’s humor.

UTOPIA 1976, by Morns L. Ernst (305 pp.; Rinehart; $3.50), plays that ancient but recently revived game: What will the world be like in X years? Lawyer Ernst’s answer for 1976 (assuming no atomic war): marvelous. Incomes will be doubled, politics will be dominated by brotherhood, insanity will be on the decrease and even lawyers will join in “the search for truth.” A do-gooder’s weekend mirage.

HIGHWAY OF THE SUN, by Victor W. von Hagen (320 pp.; Duell, Sloan & Pearce-Llttle, Brown; $6), describes an expedition undertaken in 1952 to retrace the famous Inca roads of the west coast of South America. A vivid and frequently fascinating mixture of history, anthropology and archaeology which sharply restores an ancient civilization.

THE SCROLLS FROM THE DEAD SEA, by Edmund Wilson (121 pp.; Oxford; $3.25), and THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, by Millar Burrows (435 pp.; Viking; $6.50), deal with the fascinating manuscripts—Biblical texts, commentaries and Essene writings—found in a cave near the Dead Sea by two Arab boys in 1947 (TIME, Sept. 5). Wilson’s book is a graceful, thorough piece of reporting. Burrows, a Yale expert, analyzes the scrolls in detail, shows at precisely what points they may fill in chinks in Biblical history.

THE SORROWS OF TRAVEL, by John Breon (250 pp.; Putnam; $3.50), is a novel about that old literary subject, restored to life by the G.I. Bill of Rights: young Americans in postwar Paris. First Novelist Breon writes knowingly enough about boys and girls who came to create and stayed to drink, but he cannot make their problems seem important, and perhaps they should have stayed home in the first place.

LIBERATED FRANCE, by Catherine Gavin (292 pp.; St. Martin’s; $5), is a concise, highly readable history (1944-53) in which De Gaulle is often the villain, France herself always the heroine. Able Scottish Historian Gavin, who has a sharp gift of phrase and a keen eye for the human touch, can marshal statistics and evoke a spring mood in Paris with equal grace.

A GERMAN OFFICER, by Serge Groussard (218 pp.; Putnam; $3), draws a bone-bare portrait of the classic Wehrmacht officer in defeat. Promising young French Novelist Groussard follows a crippled colonel as he scrabbles among the ruins for food, stonily defends his wartime acts, and keeps his chilling faith in Holy Germany.