Fiction: Recent Books: May 10, 1937

THE OUTWARD ROOM—Millen Brand— Simon & Schuster ($1.25). Story of a girl who cured herself of manic depressive insanity, with a happy ending that is plausible if not probable. A distinguished first novel.

THE JOPPA DOOR—Hope Williams Sykes —Putnam ($2.50). First-person narrative, in broken but clear English, of a German immigrant woman who settled in Jerusalem, moved on to Utah in the early days of the Mormons.

DARK MADONNA—Richard Summers— Caxton Printers ($2.50). Well-told, realistic tale of a southwest “Little Mexico,” revealing further weakness in such sentimentalized stories as John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat.

CAN ALL THIS GRANDEUR PERISH?— James T. Farrell—Vanguard ($2.50). Seventeen satirical, sad, sexy, saprophytic stories by the author of the hard-boiled Studs Lonigan trilogy.

EARTHLY DISCOURSE—Charles Erskine Scott WTood—Vanguard ($2). The author of Heavenly Discourse presenting a new cast of satirical puppets featuring God, Hearst, King Edward VIII. Hitler, the Supreme Court, Birth Control, Grade B.

DEATH WITHOUT BATTLE — Ludwig Renn — Dodd, Mead ($2). Cinematic story, lent a Grimm’s fairy-tale touch by primer characterizations and writing, of Communists and disillusioned Storm Troopers in Hitler Germany; by the author of War and After War.

Non-Fiction

DEAR THEO: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF VINCENT VAN GOGH—Edited by Irving Stone —Honghton Mifflin ($3.75). From the 3-volume collectors’ edition (1927), a 600-page selection of the unforgettable letters of the tormented Dutch painter to his brother, the last written two days before his suicide.

COLLECTIVISM: A FALSE UTOPIA—William Henry Chamberlin—Macmillan ($2). A veteran Russian correspondent (Christian Science Monitor) defines fascism and communism as interchangeable parts of the same death-dealing machinery.

Rio—Hugh Gibson—Doubleday, Doran ($3.50). For the well-heeled tourist, from the Pan-American diplomat, a diplomatic prospectus on “the world’s most beautiful harbor city.” Illustrated.

THE DREYFUS CASE—Albert and Pierre Dreyfus—Edited by Donald C.McKay— Yale University Press ($3.75). Vivid record of the 19th Century cause celebre; contains a detailed account by his son of Dreyfus’ four-year imprisonment on Devil’s Island, an unpublished memoir by Captain Dreyfus covering the period from his second conviction (1899) to his acquittal in 1906, together with numerous letters from prominent Dreyfus partisans.

THE SOVIETS—Albert Rhys Williams— Harcourt, Brace ($3). To 88 most mauled questions on Soviet Russia, this 554-page volume supplies “constructive” ready answers, condensed biographies of Lenin and Stalin, an impartial reading list of 450 books in English.

THE BIRTH OF CHINA—Herrlee Glessner Creel—Reynal & Hitchcock ($3.75). History of Chinese civilization from 1,400 to 600 B.C., endorsed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Carl Whiting Bishop as “the best, the most comprehensive, and the most pleasantly readable account yet published.”

THE PARIS COMMUNE OF 1871—Frank Jellinek—Oxford University Press ($3). More concerned with facts than theories, Author Jellinek’s account of the “heaven-storming” Commune (minus important documents still withheld by the French War Office) focuses on finding out why Marx and Lenin drew from it the core of their revolutionary programs.

SOUTH AFTER GETTYSBURG—Cornelia Hancock — University of Pennsylvania Press ($2). Vivid letters to her Quaker family from a 23-year-old Civil War nurse, who arrived in time to nurse the wounded after the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, followed the Army of the Potomac until the capture of Richmond.

THE OTHER HALF—John Worby—Furman ($2.50). Denounced into the best-seller class in England, the crude autobiography of a British hobo, whose muddy itinerary included Canada and the U. S. On the same plane but not so pretentious as Mark Benney’s Angels in Undress.

THE SILVER FLEECE—Robert Collis— Doubleday, Doran ($2.75). Pleasantly sedative autobiography of a tender-hearted young Irish doctor, student and interne at Cambridge, Yale and Johns Hopkins, championship rugger player, onetime Buchmanite leader.