70 Year Magazine Archive

Books in Brief

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A Program for Conservatives, by Senator John G. Tower (MacFad-den Paperback, 50¢ At any given moment in a dispute with a conservative, the thing a Liberal is most likely to say is: “But what are you for?” The proper answer to this rhetorical taunt is that conservatives are “for” human freedom, limited government and national sovereignty, and therefore “against” Liberal programs of coercion, unlimited government, and appeasement of Communism. Senator Tower not only makes the appropriate rejoinder, but spells it out with specific proposals. His program was first presented on March 1 of this year, as an eightpoint schedule of laws and congressional resolutions. This book is an expansion of that proposal—setting forward the conservative position on foreign policy, international trade, economic freedom, taxes and fiscal policy, the farm debacle, and states’ rights. m. s. evans

More Lives Than One: An Autobiography, by Joseph Wood Krutch (Sloane, $5). Joseph Krutch, former Nation drama critic, English professor, and author of charming nature books, remarks, “I probably know more about plants than any other drama critic and more about theater than any botanist.” And because he also knows more about Thoreau than any other biographer of Samuel Johnson, more about the Golden Mean than this generation, and more amusing anecdotes about literary greats than most writers, his autobiography is a joy. Krutch, raised in Tennessee and long-time New Yorker, now lives in Tucson, although it’s growing too fast to suit him. Criticized by Mencken for failure “to come all the way from Tennessee to civilization in one generation,” he has come all the way from the atheistic pessimism of his youth to a pantheistic belief that our society isn’t hopeless, provided the psychologists, sociologists and economists leave men alone. He is diffident of Liberal schemes like sharing the wealth and integration, because they are based on dogmatic assumptions about people’s reactions and needs. Since Newton’s hypothesis that all atoms

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