Jack Pots

THE TIDE OF FORTUNE--Stefan Zweig --Viking ($2.75).

Interest in the whims of Fortune is not constant. In the Middle Ages, Fortune was almost a goddess. In the rational, optimistic centuries men were more concerned with plans than with chance, with just deserts than with lucky breaks. As darkness gathers again, interest in Fortune revives. This week, in The Tide of Fortune, Biographer Stefan Zweig (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, Erasmus of Rotterdam, etc.) examines twelve varied instances of unpredictable turns of chance. The book is reminiscent of the late William Bolitho's grandly oblique sketches of adventurers, Twelve Against the Gods. Typical of Zweig's jack pots, lucky & unlucky:

>Caribbean villainy had doomed Balboa to sure punishment when by chance he discovered the one thing which could save his neck: a vast ocean for the King of Spain.

>A peewee French officer, Rouget, in one chanceful, inspired evening composed The Marseillaise, which rang through the torchlit streets of Revolutionary France. But soon he became a counterRevolutionary, escaped with his life to live 40 dismal years.

> Onetime bankrupt, thief, forger, wife deserter, John A. Sutter became a highly successful rancher in the Sacramento valley. Then in 1848 gold was discovered on his property. Result: 17,221 squatters moved in, ruined him overnight.

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