GENERAL NONFICTION

The taste for adventure books continued strong throughout the year. Men who climbed mountains, dived below the surface of the sea or went exploring the jungle wrote books almost before they had caught their breath. All year there were books about foreign and national affairs, but it was hard to find real eye-openers or mind-stretchers among them. The literary critics, humorists and personal essayists seemed to be hibernating.

THE CONQUEST OF EVEREST, by Sir John Hunt, was the high point in mountain-climbing literature, an impressively solid description of the planning and the kind of men it took to conquer Everest.

JOURNEY TO THE FAR AMAZON, by Alain Gheerbrant. This Frenchman's account of a journey into the Amazon jungles was probably the most exciting and certainly the best written adventure book of the year.

AN ENGLISH YEAR, by Nan Fairbrother, stood quietly alone in its class, the charming, finely written memoir of an Englishwoman's life in the country, with her children, the sights and sounds of nature and her own musings.

I'LL CRY TOMORROW, by Lillian Roth, joined the long list of confessional books by alcoholics who have been saved. Unabashedly frank and loaded with sordid details, Nightclub Entertainer Roth's tell-all became one of the year's top bestsellers.

NEW CENTURY CYCLOPEDIA OF NAMES, Edited by Clarence Barnhart, was a stupendous storehouse of information, intelligently arranged and endlessly useful.

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