Books in Brief

Man in the Struggle for Peace, by Charles Malik (Harper, $5.00). The author of this stimulating group of essays was the long-time UN delegate from Lebanon, a President of the General Assembly, and one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite these credentials, his books has not pleased the Establishment. Justly so. Mr. Malik is an anti-Communist who knows that Western foreign policy has been predicated on a series of false assumptions about the nature of Communism, and on a disastrously faint regard for the eternal values of Western civilization. Why, he asks, should a UN vote against the West not have costly consequences for a “neutralist,” instead of being the occasion for increased foreign aid? He calls for a revolutionary counteroffensive against Communism on all fronts, using guerrilla and psywar tactics. If his enthusiasm for the UN seems anomalous, it is understandable in one who thinks the West should use the General Assembly as a showcase for its pride and determination, rather than an East River Mount Caucasus where the vultures daily feed on its liver.

D. G. M. COXE Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774-1776, edited by Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle (McGraw-Hill, $8.50). The journals of Boswell are becoming, for our time, what the letters of Cicero were for the men of the Renaissance — a fascinating, disconcerting image of man’s complexity. The only thing to compete with it for range and depth of exploration in the central mystery of man is Boswell’s own life of Johnson. The author of the greatest biography is now the author and subject of the runner-up in this genre. The present volume, ninth in a series with an open end, takes Boswell from age 34 to 36, Johnson from 65 to 67, a period climaxed by the famous encounter so adroitly stage-managed by Boswell — between the Great Cham and Wilkes, the Great Atheist. The editors find this an ominous period, during which the Edinburgh lawyer grew increasingly dissatisfied with his profession and his dissipations, neither of which he could escape despite sporadic efforts. Perhaps these experts in Boswel-liana see too much of their subject’s dark future in his middleage hangovers and discouragements; but we owe them a great debt for the learning with which they annotate this amazing series of volumes. And the marvel behind it all remains Boswell, the brilliant recorder of his own mediocrity, the genius eavesdropping on the fool, reminding us how disconcerting it is to look honestly into one’s own heart.

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Man in the Struggle for Peace, by Charles Malik (Harper, $5.00). The author of this stimulating group of essays was the long-time UN delegate from Lebanon, a President of the General Assembly, and one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite these credentials, his books has not pleased the Establishment. Justly so. Mr. Malik is an anti-Communist who knows that Western foreign policy has been predicated on a series of false assumptions about the nature of Communism, and on a disastrously faint regard for the eternal values of Western civilization. Why, he asks, should a UN vote against the West not have costly consequences for a “neutralist,” instead of being the occasion for increased foreign aid? He calls for a revolutionary counteroffensive against Communism on all fronts, using guerrilla and psywar tactics. If his enthusiasm for the UN seems anomalous, it is understandable in one who thinks the West should use the General Assembly as a showcase for its pride and determination, rather than an East River Mount Caucasus where the vultures daily feed on its liver.

D. G. M. COXE Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774-1776, edited by Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle (McGraw-Hill, $8.50). The journals of Boswell are becoming, for our time, what the letters of Cicero were for the men of the Renaissance — a fascinating, disconcerting image of man’s complexity. The only thing to compete with it for range and depth of exploration in the central mystery of man is Boswell’s own life of Johnson. The author of the greatest biography is now the author and subject of the runner-up in this genre. The present volume, ninth in a series with an open end, takes Boswell from age 34 to 36, Johnson from 65 to 67, a period climaxed by the famous encounter so adroitly stage-managed by Boswell — between the Great Cham and Wilkes, the Great Atheist. The editors find this an ominous period, during which the Edinburgh lawyer grew increasingly dissatisfied with his profession and his dissipations, neither of which he could escape despite sporadic efforts. Perhaps these experts in Boswel-liana see too much of their subject’s dark future in his middleage hangovers and discouragements; but we owe them a great debt for the learning with which they annotate this amazing series of volumes. And the marvel behind it all remains Boswell, the brilliant recorder of his own mediocrity, the genius eavesdropping on the fool, reminding us how disconcerting it is to look honestly into one’s own heart.