Books Briefly
Books Briefly Exercise in Diplomacy MIDDLE EAST MISSION by Elmore Jackson W.W. Norton. 124 pp. $12.95. The fact that Egypt's President Gamal Nasser explored peace talks with Israel in the...
...The last half of his life, which included his valiant stonewalling of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's investigating subcommittee, is often viewed as a tragic epilogue to the earlier years that produced The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and other classics of the detective genre...
...This entertaining armchair exploration includes extensive notes and a bibliography...
...Although Ben-Gurion had delayed the attack a few days at Jackson's urging, popular pressures were too great, and the peace process was undermined...
...Pressures to build up arms were also great on Nasser...
...Brown, who served as Jimmy Carter's Defense Secretary, supports a modest increase in military spending...
...Nothing escapes her eye: Rowers, plants, birds, shells, stones, mammals, spiders, oysters, insects, and fish are among her fascinations with the natural world...
...Like most politically conscious writers in a bourgeois culture, Dashiell Hammett has never been correctly understood...
...Though the particulars of the mother/ daughter experience of Rose and Kim Chernin were surely out-of-the-ordinary, the problems of their relationship closely parallel those of more traditional families, once again demonstrating the universality of the bond...
...The fact that Egypt's President Gamal Nasser explored peace talks with Israel in the mid-1950s may come as a surprise to those who thought Anwar Sadat was the first to do so...
...Exploring Baja A DESERT COUNTRY NEAR THE SEA by Ann Zwinger Harper & Row...
...Though Kim writes of the predictable arguments, silences, and pain, neither her own anger nor Rose's passion is communicated...
...24.95...
...Johnson supplies valuable extracts of personal correspondence, FBI reports, and sketches of Hammett by his daughters, his wife, and his close friend, Lillian Hellman...
...This book provides a foretaste of the military policies likely to be pursued by the next Democratic President...
...this was especially true in the 1950s...
...Catechism on Security THINKING ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY by Harold Brown Westview Press...
...17.95...
...But there is a bothersome feeling of a biography missed, which is all the more disturbing because of Johnson's own writing talent...
...Her daughter Kim's story is one of rebellion in reverse: disaffection with radicalism after a trip to the Soviet Union, early marriage and motherhood, commitment to the arts instead of politics...
...299 pp...
...That so much bloodshed followed before peace was finally achieved was partly the result of Israel's massive attack in February 1955 on Egyptian forces in Gaza, provoked by frequent fedayeen attacks which Nasser had tried to diminish in the course of negotiations through Jackson...
...he emphasizes the importance of "arms control" (but not disarmament) and views the Soviet Union not as an "evil empire" but as the United States' chief rival in the world...
...The definitive work on Hammett, one which has the imagination to see him in his full socio-literary complexity, has not yet appeared...
...Here is a unique twist on a time-honored theme: Mother is a radical, daughter is not...
...Elmore Jackson, then head of the Quaker United Nations program and trusted on both sides, was asked to conduct these unofficial negotiations...
...Diane Johnson's biography is among the best collections of information about him to date, but it, too, imprisons Hammett in the artificial conception of blocked writer and eccentric political convert...
...A LIFE by Diane Johnson Random House...
...Anyone concerned about Middle East violence and hopeful about diplomatic alternatives would do well to read this book...
...17.95...
...288 pp...
...Commerce, including resorts and deep-sea fishing, is encroaching on parts of the peninsula, but she concentrates on the rugged habitat, the native people, and the region's history...
...delays in arms sales, he sought arms from Czechoslovakia...
...after the Israeli attack and U.S...
...The Zwingers made their first trip to the Cape fifteen years ago "to escape the mania of Christmas" and have returned every year since...
...Complex Enigma DASHIELL HAMMETT...
...Harold Brown's new book is a virtual catechism of the moderate Democratic position on defense...
...His commitments to Marxism and class struggle are generally seen as antithetical to his contributions as a novelist...
...Thus, their reconciliation, forged by this joint memoir, lacks moment...
...Naturalist Ann Zwinger's book is subtitled "a natural history of the Cape region of Baja California," and it is an affectionate tribute to the southern tip of the narrow land strip between the Pacific and the Gulf of California, generously illustrated with delicate drawings by the author and photographs by her husband, Herman H. Zwinger...
...His brief but meticulous account of the sensitive mediator role he played between Israel's David Ben-Gurion (then Defense Minister), Egypt's Nasser (then Prime Minister), and others is a fascinating lesson in the art of diplomacy...
...The story of Rose Chernin, a Russian immigrant and lifelong communist activist, is an interesting if familiar one as she is described organizing in the Bronx, fund-raising on the West Coast, and serving a Smith Act prison sentence...
...14.95...
...309 pp...
...399 pp...
...Rebellion in Reverse IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE by Kim Chernin Ticknor & Fields...
Vol. 48 • March 1984 • No. 3
