Recent Books

THE FRIENDLY TREE--Cecil Day Lewis --Harper ($2.50). A first-novel love story whose greensick sentimentality Poet Lewis' revolutionary U. S. rooters will regret was not obscured in his less telltale verse.

SON OF HAN--Richard Lapiere--Harper ($2.50). Laid in 19th Century China, the quiet but well written story of a talented youth whose efforts to become a scholar are sacrificed to the customs of family worship.

PEACE IS WHERE THE TEMPESTS BLOW --Valentine Kataev--Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50). The story of two boys who become involved in the 1905 Russian Revolution when they hide a fugitive from the mutinous cruiser Potemkin; by the author of Time, Forward!

HERO BREED -- Pat Mullen -- McBride ($2.50). Author Mullen (Man of Aran) keeps his heroine out of the way to the end so as to give plenty of room for his hard-hitting, quick-tempered Irish fishermen and smugglers.

BEAT TO QUARTERS--C. S. Forester-- Little, Brown ($2.50). Expert sea yarn in which an English frigate fights it out with a 50-gun Spanish warship on a strange mission to South America in Napoleon's day.

Non-Fiction I WANTED WINGS--Beirne Lay Jr.-- Harper ($2.50). The education of a U. S. Army flyer at Randolph and Kelly Fields, Texas. Spirited, informative reading.

OLD Fuss AND FEATHERS--Arthur D. Howden Smith--Greystone ($4). Biography of Winfield Scott, 6 ft. 4 1/2 in. hero of the War of 1812, the Indian Wars and the Mexican War, credited with training the best officers of the Union and Confederate armies and with never losing a military engagement, never winning a political one.

THE COMPLETE DIALOGUES OF PLATO (2 Vols.)--Translated by Benjamin Jowett--Random House ($5). Well-printed, sturdy edition (facsimile of the third and latest) of Jowett's classic translation, with all marginal notes, at one-fifth the usual price.

A DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH -- Eric Partridge -- Macmillan ($12.50). Scholarly and gallant 999-page attempt to list the flood of "colloquialisms and catchphrases, solecisms and catachreses, nicknames, vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been naturalized" (40,000 entries in all) by an English lexicographer.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.