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Those zealous amateurs who start hunting wildflowers in waterproof boots with snow still on the ground may sniff at this book because it is not a field guide to slip into the coat pocket. All others should rejoice, for Farrell Grehan has taken a remarkable series of color photographs that are almost uniformly successful in capturing the beauty of more than 300 different kinds of wildflowers across the country. The photos are delicate, somewhat sweet, and unabashedly romantic. The text, keyed to the photos, is by a senior botanist at The New York Botanical Garden; it is informative, adequately technical and a model of clarity. One quibble: many of the pictures would be helped by some discreet indication of scale.
A CONCISE HISTORY OF MODERN SCULPTURE by Herbert Read. 310 pages.
Praeger. $7.50. Beginning with Rodin and the influence of Cezanne at the turn of the century, modern sculpture has erupted into a bewildering jungle of movements, styles and highly individual artists. Sir Herbert Read, despite an occasionally oracular tone, is one of the better available guides through this wilderness, with strongly phrased opinions and provocative prejudices. He comes remarkably close to getting it all into this small-format book—and making it all intelligible, even to the sculpturally illiterate.
THE STORY OF ART FOR YOUNG PEOPLE by Ariane Ruskin. 157 pages. Pantheon. $6.95. The reproductions are pretty, the art works selected are all essential classics, the coverage is comprehensive, the text is pleasant—in fact the only thing that seriously mars this children's introduction to art is its total lack of courage. Modern art is given too little space, even in a book that necessarily covers ground quickly. There is no gore: paintings of battles, monsters or martyrs are avoided—and, incredible in a history of art, there is not a single Christ on the Cross, while the only Pietd is Michelangelo's great but bloodless sculpture. But the most egregious lapse is the avoidance of nudity: even the Venus de Milo, certainly an essential classic, is omitted.
THE PRESENCE OF SPAIN by James Morris with photographs by Evelyn Hofer.
1 19 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $15.
The author's concept of the country is Ortega y Gasset's classic summation: "A cloud of dust, left in the air when a great people went galloping down the highroad of history." But Writer Morris' verbal veronicas somehow elude most of the cliches; and Photographer Hofer provides unexpected perspectives on the inevitable scenes, plus an unusual paseo of portraits to reveal a people as darkly brooding as the land.
TIME AND THE RIVER FLOWING: GRAND CANYON by Francois Leydet. 1 76 pages. Sierra Club. $20. The Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation is now pushing plans for construction of a pair of high dams on the Colorado River, at Marble Gorge and Bridge Canyon within the Grand Canyon proper. The idea has stirred the conservationist Sierra Club (TiME, March 27) to rise in protest against the "chain of destructive forces" that would "end the living river's flowing for all this civilization's time." Author Francois Leydet makes the Sierra Club's case in a striking book. Glowing color photographs show once more how awesomely beautiful the