Books in Brief

The Extremists, by Mark Sherwin (St. Martin’s, $5.00). The extremists, in case you wonder, range from Barry Goldwater, William Buckley and the American Security Council way out to Gerald L. K. Smith and George Lincoln Rockwell among conservatives; to the Left belongs the palm for keeping their message before the American people. The author never feels obliged to define “extremist”; as the late News Editor of the New York Post, he has found he has only to apply the label. Oh yes—there are also extremists on the Left. They are called Communists. But since Americans long ago immunized themselves against their virus, the author doesn’t bother exploring the 818 Red fronts (he cites Victor Riesel’s count) that “flourished in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s” So he is free to concentrate on the real Enemy—whom he belabors too tediously even to activate Liberal glands. Twenty years on the Post do leave a man tired. N. mccaffrey

The Concise Bible, a condensation by Frances Hazlitt (Regnery, $4.00). In less than 200 pages Mrs. Hazlitt has presented the grandest passages of the Old Testament and the New, linked together by bits of narrative and explanation in her own remarkably classical prose. An excellent starting point for younger readers —and not only for younger readers: halfway through this glorious volume, one reviewer vowed it wouldn’t be so long, next time, before he spent an evening with the Word of God. w. f. Rickenbacker

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The Extremists, by Mark Sherwin (St. Martin’s, $5.00). The extremists, in case you wonder, range from Barry Goldwater, William Buckley and the American Security Council way out to Gerald L. K. Smith and George Lincoln Rockwell among conservatives; to the Left belongs the palm for keeping their message before the American people. The author never feels obliged to define “extremist”; as the late News Editor of the New York Post, he has found he has only to apply the label. Oh yes—there are also extremists on the Left. They are called Communists. But since Americans long ago immunized themselves against their virus, the author doesn’t bother exploring the 818 Red fronts (he cites Victor Riesel’s count) that “flourished in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s” So he is free to concentrate on the real Enemy—whom he belabors too tediously even to activate Liberal glands. Twenty years on the Post do leave a man tired. N. mccaffrey

The Concise Bible, a condensation by Frances Hazlitt (Regnery, $4.00). In less than 200 pages Mrs. Hazlitt has presented the grandest passages of the Old Testament and the New, linked together by bits of narrative and explanation in her own remarkably classical prose. An excellent starting point for younger readers —and not only for younger readers: halfway through this glorious volume, one reviewer vowed it wouldn’t be so long, next time, before he spent an evening with the Word of God. w. f. Rickenbacker