Nostalgic Scramble

FROM THE CRASH TO THE BLITZ: 1929-1939 by Cabell Phillips. 596 pages. Macmillan. $12.50.

What explains the popularity of the only-yesterday school of history? Is it the reassuringly manageable look? Chaos neatly packaged with all the shapeliness of the Farmer's Almanac. Is it the pleasant mood of nostalgia? One's youth staged under soft lights to the music of Guy Lombardo. Is it the chewy, toothsome presence of facts? Dates, names and practically nothing else.

Whatever the reason, just feed readers those scenario-setting lines like "Saturday, March 4, 1933, was a raw, blustery day in Washington ..." and watch them freak out, history-trippers all.

New York Timesman Cabell Phillips, author of The Truman Presidency and a Washington reporter for 25 years, says that the "framework" of what he calls his "journalistic reprise" is "necessarily political." But the charm of the only-yesterday memoir is its look of pure miscellany. For all his muttering about framework, Phillips' shambles, happily, is no exception.

At the cocktail party of total recall, Lou Gehrig rubs elbows with Harry Hopkins, and Hitler bumps nastily into John Dillinger. Jean Harlow, meet Eleanor Roosevelt. Jim Farley, do you know Ina Ray Hutton? Father Coughlin, as I live and breathe!

Juxtaposition makes trivia. Election results get scrambled with World Series scores and the falling stock quotations on "Black Thursday," 1929. Depression breadlines seem to queue up next to Earl Carroll chorus lines.

And what can Phillips possibly say about the Depression? First, the throat-clearing generalization: "Some authorities describe it as the ultimate collapse of the industrial revolution, with the machine devouring man." Then on to the insatiate facts: one family in five had $3,000 to spend in 1932, the average weekly wage of factory workers was $16.21, the cost of a Chevy was $445, etc. The New Deal becomes a kind of family album of brain-truster portraits, with a few hasty tributes from Old Liberal Phillips. For instance: "Social Security was the most profound and the most enduring" of F.D.R.'s reforms.

Only-yesterday histories have special charm for the connoisseur who wants to collect early POLICE BRUTALITY pictures (see page 263). Or the crank who loves typographical errors--Charles Lindberg (page 23), P. G. Woodhouse (page 472), Charles Evens Hughes (page 503). The only-yesterday's narrator is a White Rabbit. Always he must hurry on. With more than 850 photographs and drawings, Phillips' documentary spews images at double-quick newsreel speed while spieling commentary at the tempo of a tobacco auctioneer.

From the Crash to the Blitz is the first volume in the New York Times series, Chronicle of American Life. The 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are also scheduled to be turned into only-yesterday history. Stand by, America, for all the nostalgia that's fit to print.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.