Books: New Crop

THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (334 pp.)—Edited by Martha Foley—Houghton Mifflin ($3.50).

Here are 28 stories which Miss Martha Foley, an old hand at editing this sort of anthology, says are the best of the past year. Perhaps they are the best; they are still not very good. Yet it is probable that if another editor had chosen them they would be neither much better nor greatly different. For these stories accurately reflect the work of the younger and more "serious" postwar writers.

If the reader expects stories of the war itself, he will not find them. Only a couple involve fighting men...