NON-FICTION: Getting Better

MAN RISES TO PARNASSUS—Henry Fairfield Osborn—Princeton University Press ($2.50). Ages and ages ago, but eons after primates became distinctly monkeys, apes and men, mankind began his fumbling rise to earthly supremacy. The start was probably on the plateaus of Central Asia and the first men were certainly runners. They hunted to live. Descendants of theirs who wandered into other plateaus of the continents continued the hunting life. Others traveled into forests and became climbers, others into level lowlands and became squatting farmers; others into seashores and became aquatic. Millennia spent in...