Books: The Hill Gentry

RED HILLS AND COTTON: AN UP-COUNTRY MEMORY—Ben Robertson—» Knopf ($2.50).

This is an eloquent hymn to one Southern way of life—that of the Hill Gentry. It is also an indigenous statement of the idea for which many Southerners believe the South fought the Civil War—that only those governments are strong which are based on the land and its people, not on factories and the people who own or work in them. Ben Robertson is a Scotch-Irishman from the red clay hills of South Carolina, a correspondent for New York's PM and a radiant devotee of the New Deal.

Webbed and Woven. For two...