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Reprint, Spring 1986


ISSUE:  Spring 1986

“A matchless and unequaled primer for the novice, an invaluable reference for the experienced scholar, and, indeed, the first book anyone possessing even a slight interest in American legal history should read.” Thus did The American Journal of Legal History acclaim Laurence M. Friedman’s A History of American Law when it was first published in 1973. Now a second, revised edition, with fresh references added, is available as a Touchstone Book [$18.95]. Touchstone has also reprinted General Bruce C. Palmer, Jr.’s The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam, a work described by The Wall Street Journal as “a senior military commander’s honest, unsentimental account of the Vietnam War” [$8.95]. Two other recent Touchstone Books are, respectively, Seymour Melman’s The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline [$9.95] and I.M. Destler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake’s Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy[$8.95]. Capricorn Books has come out with a paper edition of Robert H. Walker’s The Reform Spirit in America: A Documentation of the Pattern of Reform in the American Republic, a sourcebook ranging from Cotton Mather on social morality to the NAACP on civil rights [$5.95]. Vintage Books is offering Roland H. Spector’s Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan, which The New York Times Book Review called “the best book by far on the Pacific War” [$9.95]. Fireside Books has a paper edition of The Working Woman Report: Succeeding in Business in the 80’s, a guide compiled by the editors of Working Woman with Gay Bryant and deemed by Publishers Weekly to be “the most comprehensive and valuable book yet” for women seeking information on subjects ranging from salaries to child care options and tax credits for working mothers [$8.95]. North Point Press has republished in paper Edward Hoagland’s Walking the Dead Diamond River, a collection of 19 essays about the New England wilderness, dogs, jury duty, mountain lions, power, fame, and life in the big city by a writer Washington Post Book World lauds as “the Thoreau of our time” [$10.00].

LIVES & LETTERS

Published in five volumes between 1953 and 1972, Leon Edel’s Henry James: A Life is considered one of the major literary biographies of this century. Edel has now revised, updated, and condensed into one volume a biography that won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Harper & Row is offering a cloth edition of the first complete one-volume biography of James ever published, including significant new material about his life [$24.95]. Carroll & Graf has brought out paper editions of the biographies of two other famous writers. The first is André Maurois’ Olympio: The Life of Victor Hugo, which the Christian Science Monitor considered “a model of biographical carftsmanship” [$12.95]; and the second is Arthur Mizener’s The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford, which Saturday Review praised as “an assured, informed, and highly sophisticated biography” [$12.95]. Vintage and Summit Books are offering respective biographies of two individuals whose lives loom large in the history of the English Reformation. The Vintage Book is Richard Marius’ Thomas More, a work Tudor historian G.R. Elton cited for telling “powerful truths about a scene hitherto obscured in the mists of saint-worship” [$10.95]. Summit Books has reprinted Carolly Erickson’s Mistress Anne: The Exceptional Life of Anne Boleyn, a life of the tragic heroine for whose hand Henry VIII broke the tie that bound England to papal Rome [$10.95]. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich has published paper editions of The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. Five, 1936—1941, as edited by Anne Oliver Bell [$8.95] and James Atlas’ much-acclaimed Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet [$10.95]. Dodd Mead has a paper reprint of Robert A. Hendrickson’s The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton, a one-volume edition of an original two-volume biography Louis Auchincloss deemed “a classic” [$15.95]. Veteran New York Times correspondent Drew Middleton called Philip Ziegler’s Mountbatten “one of the best biographies I have read in 20 years” and one now available as a paper volume in Harper & Row’s Perennial Library [$10.95]. A recent Fireside Book is Henry Pleasants’ The Great Singers: From the Dawn of Opera to Caruso, Callas and Pavarotti [$10.95].

FICTION

As additions to its Harvest/HBJ Book series, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich has republished two of Ellen Glasgow’s most famous novels, namely Barren Ground (1925) and The Sheltered Life (1938) [$8.95 each]. Another Southern woman writer, one less known today than Ellen Glasgow but her contemporary, is Evelyn Scott, author of The Wave, a novel of the Civil War which was initially published in 1929 and has now been reprinted in a paper edition by Carroll & Graf [$9.95]. Other recent Carroll & Graf paper reprints include: Joseph McElroy’s A Smuggler’s Bible[$9.50], J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (winner of England’s prestigious Booker Prize) [$4.95], John Dickson Carr’s The Lost Gallows [$3.50], David Martin’s Final Harbor [$4.95], A.R. Gurney, Jr.’s The Snow Ball [$4.50], Rose Macaulay’s Crewe Train [$8.95], and James Purdy’s Cabot Wright Begins[$4.50]. Among the additions to Harper & Row’s Perennial Library are: Ella Leffland’s Love Out of Season [$7.95] and Rumors of Peace [$7.95], Gabriel Garciá Marquez’s Collected Stories [$6.95], Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s Acquainted with the Night [$5.95] and Rough Strife [$5.95], and M. Ageyev’s Novel with Cocaine [$6. 95]. Penguin Books is offering two novels by William S. Burroughs, they being, respectively, Junky [$4.95] and Exterminator [$4.95]. Kentucky has a cloth edition of Harriette Simpson Arnow’s Mountain Path[$24.00]. Bison Books has reissued Rose Wilder Lane’s Old Home Town [$8.50], and Fireside Books is offering Jack Finney’s Time and Again [$9.95]. William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun is available as a Vintage Book [$3.95], while Vintage Contemporaries has reprinted Barry Hannah’s Airships [$5.95]. Touchstone Books has a new edition of Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s novel Spinster [$7.95].

LITERATURE IN GENERAL

St. Martin’s has published a fourth edition of Contemporary Poets, a major reference work which first appeared in 1970. Edited by James Vinson and Daniel Kirkpatrick, the new edition is an authoritative, up-to-date guide to the major living poets of the English language, presenting both biographical data and a signed critical essay on some 800 prominent poets as well as a title index listing all the poems included in the main body of the book [$70.00]. Yale has brought out a second edition of John Hollander’s Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form, an analysis of poetic texts from Donne to Blake to William Carlos Williams [$12.95 paper]. Harvard is offering a new edition of Alastair Fowler’s Kinds of Literature: An introduction to the Theory of Genes and Modes, which the (London) Times Higher Education Supplement described as “a new map of literature, a new chart of its contents” [$22.50 cloth, $8.95 paper]. A recent addition to the Cambridge Paperback Library is Paul A. Cantor’s Creature and Creator: Myth-making and English Romanticism, a study of the creation myth as a romantic form [$12.95]. Robert Duncan’s Fictive Uncertainties, a collection of 13 essays on poetics and mythopoesis, is now available as a New Directions Paperbook [$9.95].

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