Books: Russia in Retrospect

THE COUNTESS FROM IOWA—Countess Nostitz—Putnam ($3).

To most readers, the value of contemporary reminiscences lies as much in what can be made out dimly between the lines as in what is boldly stated in the text. Last year the reminiscences of Mabel Dodge Luhan (European Experiences) and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr ("King Lehr" and the Gilded Age) were prime examples of such oblique candor. Although both authors revealed an intermittent circumspection, both were sufficiently engrossed in telling their own stories to make indirect admissions of which they appeared to be unaware. Cut in the same...