Books: Tired Traveler

TWO WORLDS—Lester Cohen—Coviet, Friede. ($3.50).

When Hawthorne wrote his grim Glimpses of English Poverty he started a tradition for U. S. authors of travel books which has persisted ever since. Brooding, melancholy, suspicious of the claims of foreign patriots, Hawthorne found little to cheer him except the occasional kindness shown by slum children to children still smaller. Critic Edmund Wilson was writing in that classic, if somewhat astringent, mood when last month he offered his skeptical impressions of the U. S. and the U. S. S. R. in Travels in Two Democracies. For most of his long (412 pages) Two Worlds,...