Books: Liberty & Horror

AN ALMANAC OF LIBERTY, by William O. Douglas (409 pp.; Doubleday; $5.50), is remarkable chiefly because it takes one of the year's pleasantest publishing ideas and turns it into a bore. Almanac-browsing is a lost pleasure to most Americans, and this attempt to revive it looks promising—until the reader actually starts to browse. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, prolific writer about his rambles in the Far East, has struck off 366 little devotional essays on American liberty for the "common man's" year (which seems always to be leap year)....

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