Recent Books

Non-Fiction

NOT UNDER FORTY--Willa Gather-- Knopf ($2). Brief collection of six quiet Prose pieces ranging from an essay on Thomas Mann to a memoir of Sarah Orne Jewett, including a few personal recollections by the most reticent of contemporary novelists. The title means that the book "will not interest persons under 40 years of age." VILLAINS AND VIGILANTES--Stanton A.

Coblentz--Wilson-Ericsson ($3). Academic study thoroughly recounting the bloody doings of the two vigilante committees that administered justice in San Francisco from 1851 to 1856, together with an account of the crime wave (1,200 murders in four years) that made them necessary.

WILLIAM HOGARTH--Marjorie Bowen --Appleton-Century ($5). This able biography of the great satirist paints a vivid picture of the London background of Hogarth's work, tells the careers of the subjects of his portraits, describes his fight for the first copyright law (1735), explains how it happened that the pug-nosed little Cockney genius was so detested by academic critics that his achievements went unrecognized until a century after his death.

PAUL LAWRENCE DUNBAR--Benjamin Brawley--University of North Carolina Press ($1). Lifeless biography of the poet who rose from a Dayton, Ohio elevator operator to a position as the most celebrated of Negro writers, died in 1906 at the age of 34.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE or SOCIALISM -- John Strachey -- Random House ($3). Handbook of Marxism, together with an excellent guide to involved works of Marx and Engels, by the author of The Coming Struggle for Power.

FROM ALLEY POND TO ROCKEFELLER CENTER--Henry Collins Brown--Button ($3.50). Mildly amusing historical hodge-podge pointing out the landmarks and retelling the legends of the five boroughs of New York City by the author of Bromistone Fronts and Saratoga Trunks.

PORTRAITS AND SELF-PORTRAITS -- Georges Schreiber -- Houghton Mifflin ($2.75). Collection of 40 pencil portraits of celebrities, mostly authors, who contribute as captions bits of autobiography, philosophy, recommended reading from their own works.

THE DIARY OF VASLAV NIJINSKY-- Edited by Romola Nijinsky--Simon & Schuster ($2.50). Last intelligible words of the great dancer, written in the year before his commitment to the insane asylum, making a grisly study which occasional overtones of schizophrenic humor do not relieve.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE-- John Langdon-Davies -- Dodd, Mead ($3). A prophet with a scientific back-ground and liberal convictions. John Langdon-Davies (Man and His Universe) sees a confused future in which Japan and Germany fight Russia (but not in the next three years), the U. S. adopts fascism, Britain remains democratic. He sees "one race in the world, with a pale, coffee-coloured skin, mongoloid eyes, rather shorter than the average Englishman of today."

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