Books: Philosopher Without Quest

DIALOGUES IN LIMBO (249 pp.)—George Santayana—Scribner ($3).

In 1942, an old Spanish philosopher living in Rome had completed the first volume of his autobiography. In the midst of a world war, both the U.S. State Department and the Vatican thought the book important enough to be smuggled out of Italy in a diplomatic pouch. When Persons and Places was published in the U.S. in 1944, it became the second book of Philosopher George Santayana to win the popular accolade of the Book-of-the-Month Club (the first: his only novel, The Last Puritan). Readers who couldn't...