Book Notes

THOMAS JEFFERSON--Hendrik Willem Van Loon--Dodd, Mead ($2.50); The present generation, says Author Van Loon (Van Loon's Geography--TIME, Sept. 12, 1932; The Arts--TIME, Oct. 4, 1937), should have object lessons in the lives of "nice, comfortable, decent, human heroes with nobility in their souls." Thomas Jefferson is such a lesson--106 pages of amiable discourse. Only a general outline is given of Jefferson as statesman, and the book is likely to go down best with youth. Illustrations in color and line-plus-wash by the author.

THE ART OF MURDER--William Rough-ead--Sheridan House ($2.75). Excellently written studies of eight famous 17th-and 18th-Century murders, including Pennsylvania's notorious Chapman murder (with arsenic: 1831) and the sensational French killing of the Duchess of Praslin by her husband (sharp and blunt instruments: 1847). Author Roughead's calm, intelligent, slightly old-worldly accounts (Twelve Scots Trials, Enjoyment of Murder) have made him, in Dorothy Sayer's words, "the best showman that ever stood before the door of a chamber of horrors."

LEE'S LIEUTENANTS, Vol. II -- Douglas Soufhall Freeman -- Scribner ($5). Volume I of Author Freeman's massive work of the Confederate warriors (Lee's Lieutenants, TIME, Oct. 26), closed with the aftermath of the Seven Days' battles. Volume II takes the reader from Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville and the death of Stonewall Jackson. Other famous "lieutenants" included are James Longstreet, Jeb Stuart, Jubal Early, A. P. Hill R. S. Ewell, D. H. Hill, J. B. Hood, R. H. Anderson, W. N. Pendleton. Detailed, scholarly examination of every inch of the battlefields is coupled with dramatic descriptions of men in action, adding up to an invaluable period piece. A fine successor to Author Freeman's classic four-volume biography, R. E. Lee (TIME, Oct. 22, 1934; Feb. II, 1935).

FIRST HARVEST -- Vladimir Pozner --Viking ($2.50). Setting of this novel, by the French author of The Edge of the Sword, is a village on the northern coast of Occupied France. Blonde, 16-year-old Yvonne, a French girl who devoutly believes in truth, comes face to face with the awful consequences of honest dealings with the enemy. Rich in character studies of Nazi soldiers, Gestapo functionaries, French villagers, First Harvest is a dismal, moral tale of average literary merit.

MUTINY IN JANUARY -- Carl Van Doren -- Viking ($3.50). On a January morn ing in 1781, Brigadier General Anthony Wayne wrote desperately to George Washington, informing him of "a mutiny that for a week threatened the Americans with the violent collapse of their whole army and the loss of their prospects of independence." The mutineers (from the Pennsylvania Line regiments, stationed under Wayne at Morristown, NJ.) rebelled at their lack of pay, food, decent clothing. British General Sir Henry Clinton hoped to persuade the malcontents to join him in Manhattan. The full story of the spying and intrigue is told, for the first time, by Author Van Doren (Secret History of the American Revolution}, but is more likely to appeal to amateur historians than to the general reader.

GEORGIA BOY -- Erskine Ca I dwell --Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($2). Author Caldwell collects 14 of his tales of life in Georgia with Pa, Ma and Handsome Brown, the colored help. Sometimes Pa is selling Ma's old love letters at wastepaper prices. Sometimes Ma is trying to get goats off the roof in time to welcome the Ladies' Social Circle. Sometimes Handsome is up a tree after woodpeckers. The stories are amusing, featherweight.

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