Books in Brief

THE COUNTRY TEAM, by Robin Moore (Crown, $5.95). Robin Moore starts off with one major handicap in his new suspense novel, The Country Team: the reader knows in advance how it is going to work out. Forget the disclaimers (every author has to contend with his own libel lawyer); this is a fictionalized version of the events leading to the ouster and murder of President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. To make the identification more certain, Mituyan’s Premier KaritKi has an unscrupulous and seductive Dragon Lady sister-inlaw, a corrupt brother, gauleiter of the northern provinces, who is subsequently executed by the chiefs of the junta (as was Ngo Dinh Can); there are Buddhist demonstrations, a Mad Monk, self-immolations, the works. The villains are the KaritKi family and its connections and “The Country Team,” the American high command on the spot (the Ambassador and the heads of the Military Assistance Program, AID and CIA). They have no concept of what the Communists are up to and take the word of KaritKi and his brother, against the word of their own junior officers in the field, that all is well. The heroes (and doughty and valiant heroes they are) are the dedicated men of the Special Forces contingents in Mituyan and their CIA (spook) allies. Their adventures: how they secure Mituyan’s northern flank by enlisting the aid -of the mountain tribesmen and how ‘they circumvent the Country Team to let Washington know what is really going on, makes rousing reading—the kind of stuff the best adventure tales have been made of since the days of Homer. A word of caution: some of the torture and atrocity scenes are rough, not for the queasy. But that’s what has been going on in Vietnam, that’s what is going on in Vietnam and what we’re fighting for, among other things, is to free Vietnam from Communist terror. — P. L. BUCKLEY

PLEASURE OF RUINS, by Rose Macaulay (Walker, $7.50). The “ruin pleasure” which this book so beau_ tifully analyzes and illustrates is a type of enjoyment not often savored by Americans. In addition to our native forward-looking tendency and disinclination to brood over the past, we are handicapped by the jet speed of our grand tours through older lands, and, especially, by our lack of classical education. Can anyone, any more, quote Horace while exploring the site of his farms, or recall Homer’s descriptions of Troy while meditating on the ruins of that city? In a way the very pleasure of ruins, which stems at least in part from a literate awareness of what the broken stones once were, seems to belong to the past and to the professional archaeologist. Miss Macaulay’s book is all the more valuable, then, for making us aware of the riches of what she calls “the stupendous past” and, perhaps, making us realize how much we missed the last time we ploughed through Rome, Pompeii and Athens in ten days before flying on to Egypt. The — author discusses an_ incredible number of ruin sites, sketching their histories, characteristics of their people, their rediscovery and excavation, and, particularly, the way in which they were viewed by tourists through the ages and the speculations they evoked. (The latter have a remarkably similar character, no matter what the ruin or the age. The vanity of worldly glory and the passing of all things, including the ruin viewer, occurs to almost everyone.) It is a rich book, to be slowly savored like the ruins it brings before us. — J. ZOLA

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THE COUNTRY TEAM, by Robin Moore (Crown, $5.95). Robin Moore starts off with one major handicap in his new suspense novel, The Country Team: the reader knows in advance how it is going to work out. Forget the disclaimers (every author has to contend with his own libel lawyer); this is a fictionalized version of the events leading to the ouster and murder of President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. To make the identification more certain, Mituyan’s Premier KaritKi has an unscrupulous and seductive Dragon Lady sister-inlaw, a corrupt brother, gauleiter of the northern provinces, who is subsequently executed by the chiefs of the junta (as was Ngo Dinh Can); there are Buddhist demonstrations, a Mad Monk, self-immolations, the works. The villains are the KaritKi family and its connections and “The Country Team,” the American high command on the spot (the Ambassador and the heads of the Military Assistance Program, AID and CIA). They have no concept of what the Communists are up to and take the word of KaritKi and his brother, against the word of their own junior officers in the field, that all is well. The heroes (and doughty and valiant heroes they are) are the dedicated men of the Special Forces contingents in Mituyan and their CIA (spook) allies. Their adventures: how they secure Mituyan’s northern flank by enlisting the aid -of the mountain tribesmen and how ‘they circumvent the Country Team to let Washington know what is really going on, makes rousing reading—the kind of stuff the best adventure tales have been made of since the days of Homer. A word of caution: some of the torture and atrocity scenes are rough, not for the queasy. But that’s what has been going on in Vietnam, that’s what is going on in Vietnam and what we’re fighting for, among other things, is to free Vietnam from Communist terror. — P. L. BUCKLEY

PLEASURE OF RUINS, by Rose Macaulay (Walker, $7.50). The “ruin pleasure” which this book so beau_ tifully analyzes and illustrates is a type of enjoyment not often savored by Americans. In addition to our native forward-looking tendency and disinclination to brood over the past, we are handicapped by the jet speed of our grand tours through older lands, and, especially, by our lack of classical education. Can anyone, any more, quote Horace while exploring the site of his farms, or recall Homer’s descriptions of Troy while meditating on the ruins of that city? In a way the very pleasure of ruins, which stems at least in part from a literate awareness of what the broken stones once were, seems to belong to the past and to the professional archaeologist. Miss Macaulay’s book is all the more valuable, then, for making us aware of the riches of what she calls “the stupendous past” and, perhaps, making us realize how much we missed the last time we ploughed through Rome, Pompeii and Athens in ten days before flying on to Egypt. The — author discusses an_ incredible number of ruin sites, sketching their histories, characteristics of their people, their rediscovery and excavation, and, particularly, the way in which they were viewed by tourists through the ages and the speculations they evoked. (The latter have a remarkably similar character, no matter what the ruin or the age. The vanity of worldly glory and the passing of all things, including the ruin viewer, occurs to almost everyone.) It is a rich book, to be slowly savored like the ruins it brings before us. — J. ZOLA