Books: Public Conqueror

CONRAD AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES—J. H. Retinger—Roy ($2.50).

As a young man, Joseph Retinger knew his great compatriot Theodor Joseph Konrad Korzeniowski intimately, especially from 1909 to the outbreak of World War I. Now a member of the Polish Government in London, Retinger writes of those days in the sharp, graceful dialect of an old-fashioned boulevardier of letters. His book is illustrated by the brilliant Polish draftsman Feliks Topolski (TIME, Jan. 4). All of which makes for no mean addition to Conradiana.

Potatoes Collect Poison. When Retinger first went to Kent to visit Conrad, the...