ISSUE: Spring 1993
Harris Wofford is now the U. S. Senator from Pennsylvania, having won that seat in a special election in 1991; but three decades earlier he was a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, and he later served as an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. during the struggle from Montgomery to Memphis. Thus he was an eyewitness to the tumultuous events of a tumultuous decade. His account of those events he recalled in Of Kennedys if Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties which was originally published in 1980. Now Pittsburgh has reprinted Of Kennedys & Kings with a foreword by Bill Moyers and a new afterword by the author [$29. 95 cloth; $16. 95 paper]. Quill has a new edition of James L. Stokesbury’s A Short History of the American Revolution, a one-volume survey that traces the growth of the conflict that inexorably set the American colonies on the road to independence [$10. 00 paper]. Although Herbert Hoover is best known for being president of the United States from 1929 to 1933, he was also the author of 15 books, including The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, first published in 1958. According to Arthur Link, the preeminent expert on Wilson, Hoover is the first president ever to write a book about a former occupant of the Executive Mansion. Johns Hopkins has issued a new edition of The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson with a new introduction by Senator Mark Hatfield, an act which Link considers “a great service to scholarship” [$12. 95 paper]. Calvin Trillin is one of America’s few great humorists, and his humor is fully displayed in American Stories, a collection of 12 extended non-fiction pieces that appeared originally in The New Yorker. Ticknor & Fields is offering a new edition of American Stories [$10. 95 paper]. A recent edition to Nebraska’s Bison Books Series is K. Jack Bauer’s The Mexican War 1846—1848, which The Journal of American History considered “the best military history of that conflict” [$16. 95 paper]. As part of the American Heritage Library, Houghton Mifflin has reprinted The Civil War: The Best of American Heritage edited by Stephen W. Sears and including essays by such Civil War authorities as Bruce Catton, James McPherson, and Allan Nevins [$9. 95 paper]. Random House has republished The Choices We Made: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out about Abortion, edited and with an introduction by Angela Bonavoglia and a foreword by Gloria Steinem [$10. 00 paper].
Marcia Davenport was the daughter of the great lyric soprano Alma Gluck and step-daughter of the renowned violinist Efrem Zimbalist, and she was raised in a world of music. A novelist (The Valley of Decision) and passionate lover of Czechoslovakia (she was a close friend of Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk who died mysteriously in 1948), Ms. Davenport wrote her memoirs in the early 1960’s and published them under the title Too Strong for Fantasy, which a New Yorker reviewer later called “the most interesting 20th century literary musical memoir.” Pittsburgh recently published a new edition of Too Strong for Fantasy [$29. 95 cloth; $15. 95 paper]. Collier Books has republished Charles V. Hamilton’s Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. : The Political Biography of an American Dilemma which The Los Angeles Times described as “a robust, realistic portrait of Harlem’s first African-American congressman” [$15. 00 paper].
Knopf is offering new paper editions of works by three American poets. They are, respectively, Daryl Hine’s Postscripts [$12. 00], Cynthia Macdonald’s Living Wills: New and Selected Poems [$12. 00], and George Bradley’s Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil [$12. 00]. Hyperion has come out with a new edition of David Rosenberg’s A Poet’s Bible: Rediscovering the Voices of the Original Text, a translation of Hebrew scriptures which poet Hayden Carruth praised as “the best in this century without a doubt” [$14. 95 paper]. Graywolf Press has republished Linda Gregg’s The Sacraments of Desire, which Publishers Weekly described as “sundrenched lyrics, which have been compared to. . . Greek poetry” [$10. 00 paper].
Germany is the subject of two recent reprints, one published by Yale and the other by Princeton. The Yale publication is Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. ‘s Germany from Partition to Reunification: A Revised Edition of The Two Germanics since 1945, a book which German historian Gordon A. Craig lauded as “well-organized, clearly written, and meaty” [$35. 00 cloth; $13. 00 paper]. Princeton is offering a new edition of Jonathan Sperber’s Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848—1849, which Michigan historian Geoff Eley considers “one of the most important books on modem German history to emerge from the United States recently and probably the most important to emerge on the pre-Bismarck era” [$18. 95 paper]. Harvard has republished David Kaiser’s Politics & War; European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler, which, in its original edition, was a main selection of the History Book Club. [$14. 95 paper]. World War II. The Best of American Heritage and Eyewitness to World War II: The Best of American Heritage, both edited by Stephen W. Sears, are new editions to the American Heritage Library. They offer eyewitness accounts of those who participated in the greatest conflict the world has ever seen [$9. 95 each]. World Almanac has published The World Almanac: Commemorative Edition, which contains the complete 1868 original almanac and selections from 25, 50, and 100 years ago, with an overview by today’s editors. When the first edition of The World Almanac and Book of Facts was published in 1868, Andrew Johnson was in the White House, Reconstruction was the issue of the day, and there were only 38 states, with the average worker earning about 17 cents an hour [$12. 95 paper]. Vintage Books has a new edition of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians, a work The New York Times Book Review praised as “a pioneering study” [$15. 00].
Mildred Walker’s Winter Wheat, a novel about a young girl’s struggle to understand her parents and herself while growing up in the dry-land wheat country of central Montana during the early 1940’s, was originally published by Harcourt Brace in 1944. Nebraska has come out with a new edition of this now classic novel with an introduction by James Welch [Bison Books, $9. 95 paper]. Coyne & Chenoweth, a Pittsburgh publisher, has reprinted Hilary Masters’ Cooper, a novel which Kirkus Review praised as “a haunting and very lovely story, written in the rich, poetic prose one has come to expect from Masters” [$11. 00 paper]. A. S. Byatt’s huge novel, Possession, was a national best seller in this country, and as a result Vintage International has reprinted two of her earlier works, one a short story collection and the other a novel. The short story collection is Sugar and Other Stories originally published in 1987 [$10. 00], and the novel is The Game originally published in 1967 [$10. 00]. Vintage International has also reprinted two novels by A. S. Byatt’s fellow countryman, Martin Amis. They are, respectively, Time’s Arrow [$10. 00], and The Rachel Papers [$10. 00].
