Richard M. Weaver was only 33 when the first edition of his work The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Postbellum Thought was published in 1943, By the time Mr. Weaver died 20 years later at the comparatively early age of 53, The Southern Tradition had been acknowledged as a classic. Said noted historian Donald Davidson, in his comments on the first edition: "The present work ...is in scope and theme very far-reaching, as its title and subtitle suggest." A new edition of The Southern Tradition was recently published by Regnery Gateway [$21.95]. Princeton Professor of Politics Fred I. Greenstein is one of the nation's foremost authorities on the modern presidency, and he served as editor of Leadership in the Modern Presidency, a collection by nine eminent political scientists and historians presenting their assessment of the leadership styles and talents of presidents from Roosevelt through Reagan. The paper edition of Leadership has now been published by Harvard [$14.95, also available in cloth $29.95]. Transplanted Briton Alistair Cooke has been described by The New York Times as "one of the most successful communicators of his time ...droll, witty and pungent." Mr. Cooke's ability to communicate is amply displayed in America Observed: From the 1940's to the 1980's, a collection of Cooke's essays on America compiled by Ronald A. Wells which originally appeared in The Manchester Guardian. America Observed is now available as a Collier Books reprint [$8.95]. Bison Books has come out with a new edition of Comanche Bondage by Carl Coke Rister, an account of the unlucky homeseekers who followed the Englishman John Charles Beales to southern Texas late in 1834 [$7.50]. New York University Press has reissued a paper edition of Earl J. Hess's Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union in which historian Hess looks at the impact the experience of the war (battlefield death and suffering) had on what people actually thought [$12.50].