Books: The Lonely Sickness

A WILLIAM MARCH OMNIBUS, with an Introduction by Alistair Cooke (397 pp.)—Rinehart ($4).

Company K was a sardonic minor masterpiece of World War I—a painful punishment drill in the doorless barracks of total recall. Its author, William March, died two years ago at 60. almost unregarded—before his Bad Seed, a tale designed to prove that even children may have murder in their hearts, became a bestseller and a Broadway hit. Now TV's Alistair Cooke, U.S. correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, with a governess' concern to see that U.S. cultural toddlers are cozily wrapped,...