Books: Revised Editions

GIANT KILLER—Elmer Davis—John Day ($2.50).

MOSES—Louis Untermeyer—Harcourt Brace ($2.50).

Debunking has been of recent years the profitable pastime of biographers, and the relentless preoccupation of Bible scholars. Poaching on the preserves of both, a novelist now spins an entertaining yarn to debunk David, and a poet resorts to prose to do something of the sort for Moses.

Himself a Jew, Poet Untermeyer understood the tragedy of Jewish exile in Egypt, understood the something-more-than-Jew which enabled Moses to organize the return to Palestine. This something more Untermeyer fixes at 50% Egyptian blood, combined with upbringing at the sophisticated Egyptian court. The bulrush theory is but...