RECENT & READABLE

Holmes-Laski Letters, edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe. Nearly 1,500 pages of learning, gossip and friendly controversy between a skeptical old Brahmin and a Marxist intellectual (TIME, March 23).

The Man Whistler, by Hesketh Pearson. A brisk, anecdotal portrait of the 19th century painter and eccentric (TIME, March 23).

Five Gentlemen of Japan, by Frank Gibney. A searching book about the Japanese, told around the lives & times of an admiral, a farmer, a newspaperman, a steel worker and the Emperor (TIME, March 16).

The Happy Rural Seat, by George Lanning. A brilliant first novel on the subject of the unlived life, with fresh variations on the Henry James theme (TIME, March 9).

A Good Man, by Jefferson Young. The story of a Mississippi Negro who decides to paint his house, and white at that (TIME, March 9).

Prince of Players, by Eleanor Ruggles. The tragic and tempestuous life of Edwin Booth, most famed actor of his day (TIME, March 2).

The Plantation, by Ovid Williams Pierce. A skillful story, quietly told, about a self-forgetting Southern family man (TIME, March 2).

Out of Red China, by Liu Shaw-tong. A straight and human account of life under Mao Tse-tung's new order, by a young Chinese who took a close look, then ran for his life (TIME, Feb. 9).

The Mongol Empire, by Michael Prawdin. First U.S. publication of a classic history of Genghis Khan and his successors; originally (1938) published in German (TIME, Feb. 9).

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