Books: Delta in Detail

WHERE I WAS BORN AND RAISED (380 pp.)—David L. Cohn—Houghton Mifflin ($4).

This book is like an evening of mellow talk over bourbon and water. Its author, who once wrote a bestseller about the Sears-Roebuck catalogue, was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta country he writes about. Instead of a serious study of the cotton economy and the problem of race relations, he has reported loquaciously, and with the leisurely humor of an old-school Mississippian, on the moods and customs of Delta society.

He has observed that Negroes will flock to work—and work just as hard—for a farmer who is...