Books: Not Really

HERE'S ENGLAND (378 pp.)—Ruth McKenney and Richard Bransten—Harper ($3.75).

The England of Ruth McKenney and her husband Richard Bransten is not unlike the Greenwich Village she described in My Sister Eileen—a place considerably more productive of mad fun and giggling fits than the real thing. The book is designed for the intending tourist, a figure Author McKenney seems to picture as a rather backward 14-year-old for whom things have to be put very, very simply, especially dull and difficult things like history.

Sometimes things get so simple that they stop being history. Brooding...