Books: Daniels to the Defense

THE WILSON ERA: YEARS OF WAR AND AFTER (654 pp.)—Josephus Daniels—University of North Carolina Press ($4).

Josephus Daniels, of North Carolina and the Navy, is 84. He still loves a good scrap and the old Democratic Party, still hates booze, wicked women and the late Admiral William S. Sims. He has been working away at his memoirs for years. Tar Heel Editor (TIME, Dec. 25, 1939) was Vol. I of the series. Vol. IV. The Wilson Era: Years of War and After, covers the period from 1917 to 1923.

All told, the volumes make a wonderfully cranky, talky, valuable record, as honest as...