New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

THE NEW DECALOGUE OF SCIENCE-- Albert Edward Wiggam--Bobbs Merrill ($2.50). An outspoken, thoughtful appeal to solve the eternal triangle of God, Man and the Devil through the instruments of Science now available and through new standards of conduct. Mr. Wiggam is a lecturer and professor. This is his first book--a powerful new viewpoint that does not gloss over the status of civilization with honeyed words of praise and glorification. The book is divided in two parts. The first part consists of five warnings to mankind: 1) that the advanced races; of mankind are going backwards; 2) that heredity is the chief maker of men; 3) that the Golden Rule without Science will wreck the race that tries it; 4) that Medicine, Hygiene and Sanitation will weaken the human race; 5) that Morals, Education, Art and Religion will not improve the race. The second part gives the Ten Commandments of Science or the duties of man to bring about reconstruction through scientific research, eugenics, humanization of industry, preferential reproduction, etc. Excerpts: "One of the outstanding results of civilization is that it has made the world safe for stupidity." "America is simply 'hellbent' on taking a brief biological joy ride, with the definite policy of later turning over its vast intellectual conquests to the morons."

THACKERAY AND His DAUGHTER-- Lady Ritchie--Harper ($5.00). Thackeray's granddaughter has edited this new collection of letters and excerpts from the journals of her mother, Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Included are many new letters of Thackeray, some of the most amusing ones written during his lecture tour in America. Among the pages one comes upon Ibsen, Keats, the Brownings, "dear old Mr. Carlyle,," Darwin, Ruskin, Stevenson, "lunching with us at Paris, tossing back his hair."

THE PRISONER WHO SANG--Johan Bojer--Century ($2.00). Enthusiastically heralded by its jacket blurb as "A Peer Gynt in prose," this is the story of a Norwegian of many aliases, a strange lad who wanders through the countryside impersonating now a preacher, now a young actor, now a decrepit bank messenger--a "long procession of persons, created by himself, and every one of them fleeing before the police." Sometimes he grew anxious for their safety. And the reader assuredly grows dizzy. Bojer has a graphic, stark style, a trick of creating atmosphere in a single sentence.