Books Briefly
Books Briefly the price of vision: the diary of henry a. Wallace, 1942-1946, edited and with an introduction by John Morton Blum (Houghton Mifflin. 707 pp. $15). This volume should do much to...
...All his pictures are marked by his remarkable gift for depth, and his creation of distance and his subtle colors impart a mood of serenity and stillness—a balance lacking in his moody personal temperament...
...Werner is admirably succinct in his captions for the fine reproductions and in his summation of Inness's talent...
...It is a lively, intensely human, and perceptive record of what it was like to be interned by a country you had faith in, but which did not have faith in you because of your Japanese ancestry...
...Art acquisition for some collectors is apparently as compelling as drug addiction...
...These diaries, encompassing his wartime service as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice President and his brief and stormy postwar tenure as Harry Truman's Secretary of Commerce, provide useful insights into a period when critical decisions were being made in Washington...
...When the military, under racist pressure, moved more than 110,000 Japanese Americans (a majority of them American born) from Pacific Coast states to government relocation centers in 1942, among them was Charles Kikuchi, a young graduate student in social welfare at the University of California...
...Carefully researched and engagingly written, this book outlines some of the illicit international traffic in art, related museum activities, and the prospects (dim) for better control in the future...
...8.95...
...12.95...
...the kikuchi Diary, by Charles Kikuchi...
...Edited and with an introduction by John Modell (University of Illinois Press...
...A handsome book...
...8.95...
...he is never a protagonist...
...In "Populism, Socialism, and McGovernism" and "The 'Counter-Culture'" he is loftily above the battle, but his criticisms and insights are sharp...
...plus Notes and Bibliography...
...88 pp...
...About four times the length of the script for his notable television series, Alistair Cooke's America is a delightful social history of the country's development and its people and its landscapes...
...In this period of revived* interest in earlier American artists, Alfred Werner's appraisal of George Inness (1825-1894) is an appropriate recognition of this Nineteenth Century artist's skill...
...the plundered past, by Karl E. Meyer (Atheneum...
...Journalist Meyer, formerly with The Washington Post and at one time the Washington correspondent for The Progressive, estimates that art worth $15-$20 million is smuggled annually within the worldwide subculture of the art market...
...Yale historian John Morton Blum provides helpful and thoughtful annotation and commentary...
...307 pp...
...the world of nations, by Christopher Lasch (Knopf...
...His deft and witty overview is girded with a keen awareness of the diversities, the weaknesses, and the strengths of America today: "As I see it, in this country—a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism—the race is on between its decadence and its vitality...
...in ness landscapes, by Alfred Wemer (Watsoti-Guptill...
...Historian John Modell's introduction provides excellent background that deepens appreciation of the diary's significance...
...America, by Alistair Cooke (Knopf...
...Lavishly and imaginatively illustrated with photographs, paintings, and drawings...
...Don't miss reading it...
...32 full-color plates...
...While less sparkling than The Agony of the American Left, Lasch's last collection of essays, this new book is a lively compilation of disparate essays in a loose framework of "the limits of liberal feform," "alternatives to liberalism," and "the so-called post-industrial society...
...One comes away with new respect for Wallace's fierce resistance to the coming Cold War, which he perceived far more clearly than most of his contemporaries...
...353 pp...
...400 pp...
...He kept a wartime diary from the day of Pearl Harbor in 1941 until he entered the U.S...
...This volume should do much to rehabilitate the reputation of the most thoroughly misunderstood political figure of mid-Twentieth Century America...
...Army in 1945...
...Henry Agard Wallace was a complex and contradictory phenomenon: a shrewd agronomist, a naive politician, a vain egotist who readily succumbed to flattery, a fierce idealist who sacrificed power (or, at least, influence) for the sake of principle...
...Lasch is an independent historian who fits no mold except that of critic...
...Art critic Werner calls Inness "the father of American landscape," but some of his loveliest landscapes were of Italian and other foreign scenes...
...258 pp...
...This book covers the first four months of his internment in relocation centers...
...While Meyer is not sanguine about the possibility of reform, he pleads eloquently for a change in attitude toward art "to see our collective cultural remains as' a resource we have whose title is vested in all humanity...
...17.50...
...A highly readable book, and his stories of piracy in practice are suspenseful...
Vol. 38 • January 1974 • No. 1
