Books: The Editors Like

THE DARK ANGELby Waltari. (Putnam, $3.75) War, love, disguises, assassinations, plot and counterplot —this historical novel has everything, including the fall of Constantinople. Mr. Wallari has a fine, convincing touch with battles long ago.

WESTWARD THE SUNby Geoffrey Cotterell. (Eippineott, $3.50.) Linda, a witty, spirited Londoner, tells how she got rid of her solemn boy friend and married a Yank, d’he plot is trivial, hut the dialogue and byplay are delightful.

THE FACE BESIDE THE FIREby Laurens van der Post. (Morrow, $3.50.) The story of a painter’s pursuit of an ideal love is notable for fine African background and the author’s attempt to translate external events into psychological symbols rather than the other way around.

LADY WITH A SPEAKby Eugenie Clark. (Harper, $3.50.) Brisk, unpretentious reminiscences by a young ichthyologist who fell in love with the old New York aquarium at the age of nine, and has been hunting fish all over the world ever since.

THE BUCCANEERS OF AMERICAby John Esquemeling. (Macmillan, $5.75.) This classic, firsthand report of piracy in Henry Morgan’s day is full of bloody derring-do and rolls along at, for seventeenthcentury prose, a terrifying clip.

WHISTLING FOR A WINDby Charles Landery. (Knopf, $4.00.) Three amateurs sailed from Devon to the Aegean and survived, thanks to the ketch Bessie which was a better seaman than anyof them. This is a fine voyage for an armchair sailor.

THE SEA-HUNTERSby Etlonard f. Stackpole. (Lippincott, $7.50.) The author has covered two centuries of American whaling, from matters of high policy to old ships’ logs and diaries, and they make lively historical reading.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN ARTby Herbert Read.(Horizon, $4.50.) A perceptive, original critic discusses the various schools of modern art and its development from Van Gogh and Cézanne to Henry Moore and Naum Gabo. The book is a series of essay s rather than a single argument, but no less provocative for that.

WATER-COLORS BY PUL CÉZANNE selected and with an in inroduction by Georg Schmidt. (British Book Centre, $4.95.) Thirty-two color plates, most of them of works not widely reproduced, make this book a real delight.

ROMAN PAINTINGby Atnatleo Maiuri. (Skira, $15.00) Roman painting ranged over a wide field, including portraits, still life, landscape, elaborate figure compositions, and comic grotesqnerie. The lovely color plates which illustrate it (eighty-four of them) are reinforced by a text which provides a great deal of information about Roman life as well as Roman art.