Books: In the Passionless U. S.

MOREAU DE ST. MÉRY'S AMERICAN JOURNEY, 1793-1798 (394 pp.)—Translated and edited by Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts—Doubleday ($5).

Kenneth Roberts came across this diary while researching his latest novel, Lydia Bailey (TIME, Jan. 6), and got all excited about it. Written in French, and almost unknown in the U.S., the diary was a sophisticated study, by an observant French emigre, of the callow U.S. of the 1790s. Roberts persuaded his wife to translate it and polished the translation himself. First of Moreau de St. Méry's many works to be put into English, it is not to be compared for literary quality...