Books: She Was There

OVER AT UNCLE JOE'S (325 pp.)—Oriana Atkinson—Bobbs-Merrill ($3).

Oriana Atkinson denies being an expert on Russia, and sensible readers of Over at Uncle Joe's will not wish to dispute her. Neither can they disagree when she writes, "But after ten months in Moscow I do claim this: I know more about Russia than anybody who has never been there."

The wife of New York Times Correspondent Brooks Atkinson (whose last year's Russian dispatches won him this year's Pulitzer Prize), Oriana was never permitted to leave Moscow during her stay in Russia. But her restless curiosity and good-natured brashness got her into schools, museums,...