Books: Henry Doesn't Live Here

THE WALLACES OF IOWA (615 pp.)—Russell Lord—Houghton Mifflin ($5).

More than one plain-spoken journalist has found his phrases turning fuzzy trying to explain Henry Wallace. Some basic amorphous quality of mind & manner in Wallace has defied definition, by either swooning admirers or exasperated critics.

After six years of working at it, Biographer Lord, a Wallace admirer and himself a farm writer and editor, takes refuge in mystical pronouncements that are as ponderous as they are unrevealing. Writes Lord: Wallace is "no chance growth. The product of an extraordinary heritage and upbringing, deeply—almost broodingly—aware of a genetic continuity in his every act, he...