Books: The Editors Like

GRAND INQUESTby Telford Taylor. (Simon & Schuster, $4.50.) Congressional investigations are an old, sporadically useful feature of American government. Mr. Taylor describes their history and gives an account of their recent employment as political weapons in struggles having little connection with the matters supposedly under inquiry.

THE FIFTH AMENDMENT TODAYby Erwin N. Griswold. (Harvard University Press, $2.00.) The dean of the Harvard Law School explains the meaning and limitations of the Fifth Amendment and the exact legal position of witnesses who invoke its protection. The book is short, lucid, and enlightening.

HUMAN SOCIETY IN ETHICS AND POLITICSby Bertrand Russell. (Simon & Schuster, $3.50.) A veteran iconoclast discusses contemporary political and social problems with the venomous wit natural to a clever man who has never lost his wonder at humanity’s capacity for solemn, systematic idiocy.

THE MOON TO PLAY WITHby John Wiles (John Day, $3.50.) Set in South Africa, this novel presents the problems of the native through the eyes of Pinto, a country boy who does his best but never grasps the intricacies of the white man’s civilization.

FLESH AND BLOODby Francois Mauriac. (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $3.00.) A short and relatively early novel about faith, conversion, and damnation in the French provinces, showing Mauriac already preoccupied with the questions of sin and redemption which his later works explore so thoroughly.

HOMER’S DAUGHTERby Robert Graves. (Doubleday, $3.95.) Great learning sits as lightly as a feather on Mr. Graves, who must have had immense fun concocting this gay and bloody novel, in which the cocky little princess who really wrote the Odyssey explains how she came to commit so unlikely a deed.

THIS IS SYLVIAby Sandy Wilson. (Dutton, $2.50.) Camouflaging his characters as cats, Mr. Wilson has written a malicious spoof of practically everything in sight, with particular attention to show business, the literary, and cafe society.

THE OPPOSING SELFby Lionel Trilling. (Viking, $3.50.) Mr. Trilling writes with such charm, and avoids the pitfalls of professional terminology with such grace, that these brilliant and subtle comments on nine great authors stand as literature as well as most distinguished criticism.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISMedited by Floyd Stovall. (University of North Carolina Press, $4.00.) A collection of essays on the men and viewpoints affecting the course of criticism in this country. Not for casual reading, but rewarding for anyone interested in the interlocking ideas behind current critical theory and practice.

THE TWENTIESby Frederick J. Hoffman. (Viking, $5.00.) Arguing that the 1920s weren’t as silly as they sometimes sound, the author maps out in detail the serious currents which underlay “the gaudiest spree in history.”