Random Notes

More November Titles: Q: Why is Richard Nixon like the Moon? A: He has a light and a dark side. For more Milhous riddles and their solutions, read Raymond Price’s With Nixon (Viking, $10.95). . . . James Reston Jr.’s The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery (Times Books, $11.95) argues that the South considered itself on trial in the case of the Negro girl who stabbed her jailer in “self-defense,” and wanted her freed. Reston’s case took on an added plausibility with Miss Little’s mysterious escape from prison two weeks ago. . . . Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Yasir Arafat of Jewish activism, asserts in Why Be Jewish? Intermarriage, Assimilation, and Alienation (Stein & Day, $8.95): “All of them—Jewish organizations, temples, rabbis, parents—have sinned against our children; now their blood is required.” . . . According to Richard J. Barnet, writing in The Giants: Russia and the United States (Simon & Schuster, $7.95), the “anachronistic rivalry” between the U.S.A. and the USSR is perpetuated mainly by “half a dozen or so individuals in Washington or Moscow.” . . . Dropshot: The United States Plan for War with the Soviet Union in 1957 (Dial Press/James Wade Books, $11.95) is a collection of documents pertaining to a blueprint for war with the Soviet Union, worked out by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1949 on the orders of President Truman. The volume was compiled and edited by Anthony Cave Brown, the author of Bodyguard of Lies. . . . Nick Tosches, who writes on music for Rolling Stone and other fora, has written Country: The Biggest Music in America (Stein & Day/Scarborough House, $10.95). It looks very authoritative.

Just as we suspected it would be, John McPhee’s splendid reportorial study of Alaska, Coming into the Country (Farrar, $10), will shortly be available in the bookstores. . . . Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (Farrar, $15) is by James Atlas. . . . One hundred twenty-eight selections from the religious writings of C. S. Lewis will shortly be available as The Joyful Christian (Macmillan, $7.95). . . . In The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Cornell, $15), Jeffrey Burton Russell, director of the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame, provides an agnostic account of the historical manifestations of “the personification of evil.”

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More November Titles: Q: Why is Richard Nixon like the Moon? A: He has a light and a dark side. For more Milhous riddles and their solutions, read Raymond Price’s With Nixon (Viking, $10.95). . . . James Reston Jr.’s The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery (Times Books, $11.95) argues that the South considered itself on trial in the case of the Negro girl who stabbed her jailer in “self-defense,” and wanted her freed. Reston’s case took on an added plausibility with Miss Little’s mysterious escape from prison two weeks ago. . . . Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Yasir Arafat of Jewish activism, asserts in Why Be Jewish? Intermarriage, Assimilation, and Alienation (Stein & Day, $8.95): “All of them—Jewish organizations, temples, rabbis, parents—have sinned against our children; now their blood is required.” . . . According to Richard J. Barnet, writing in The Giants: Russia and the United States (Simon & Schuster, $7.95), the “anachronistic rivalry” between the U.S.A. and the USSR is perpetuated mainly by “half a dozen or so individuals in Washington or Moscow.” . . . Dropshot: The United States Plan for War with the Soviet Union in 1957 (Dial Press/James Wade Books, $11.95) is a collection of documents pertaining to a blueprint for war with the Soviet Union, worked out by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1949 on the orders of President Truman. The volume was compiled and edited by Anthony Cave Brown, the author of Bodyguard of Lies. . . . Nick Tosches, who writes on music for Rolling Stone and other fora, has written Country: The Biggest Music in America (Stein & Day/Scarborough House, $10.95). It looks very authoritative.

Just as we suspected it would be, John McPhee’s splendid reportorial study of Alaska, Coming into the Country (Farrar, $10), will shortly be available in the bookstores. . . . Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (Farrar, $15) is by James Atlas. . . . One hundred twenty-eight selections from the religious writings of C. S. Lewis will shortly be available as The Joyful Christian (Macmillan, $7.95). . . . In The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Cornell, $15), Jeffrey Burton Russell, director of the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame, provides an agnostic account of the historical manifestations of “the personification of evil.”