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A VISION OF BATTLEMENTS, by Anthony Burgess. Published 16 years after it was written, this early satirical distillation of Burgess' comic imagination is worthy of his later (1963) Orwellian Clockwork Orange. A Vision unfolds the misadventures of a mild-mannered sergeant in the British Army Vocational and Cultural Corps who muddles through World War II in the incongruous bastion of imperial Britannia atop the rock of Gibraltar.
SWANS ON AN AUTUMN RIVER, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. One of Britain's master short-storytellers shows that she has lost neither her deft cruelty nor her wise compassion in picturing human fallibility.
IN COLD BLOOD, by Truman Capote. Whatever it is called—and its author calls it a "nonfiction novel"—this meticulous reconstruction of a multiple murder in Kansas elevates journalism to art.
A THOUSAND DAYS: JOHN F. KENNEDY IN THE WHITE HOUSE, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Other New Frontiersmen stood closer to the President, but none were better equipped than Harvard Historian Schlesinger to describe the moods and assess the deeds of the Kennedy Administration, and none have done so more successfully.
THE PROUD TOWER, by Barbara Tuchman. In The Guns of August, Historian Tuchman presented a perceptive and appalling analysis of the military catastrophe of 1914. In the present sequel, she steps back a few years and examines with equal sharpness a luxurious and unheeding Europe as it drifted toward disaster.
BERNARD SHAW: COLLECTED LETTERS (1874-1897), edited by Dan H. Laurence. The first of four volumes takes Shaw from adolescence to the early years of fame and glamour in London. A tireless and brilliant correspondent who bridled neither mind nor emotions, he pursued subjects ranging from love to Fabianism to the evils of drink.
Best Sellers
FICTION
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2. Those Who Love, Stone (2)
3. The Lockwood Concern, O'Hara (3)
4. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (4)
5. The Double Image, Maclnnes (9)
6. The Billion Dollar Brain, Deighton (6)
7. Thomas, Mydans (8)
8. Airs Above the Ground, Stewart (5)
9. The Rabbi, Gordon
10. The Magus, Fowles
NONFICTION
1. In Cold Blood, Capote (2)
2. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (1)
3. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (5)
4. Kennedy, Sorensen (4)
5. Games People Play, Berne (3)
6. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (6)
7. Yes I Can, Davis and Boyar (8)
8. The Penkovskiy Papers, Penkovskiy (7)
9. A Gift of Joy, Hayes (9)
10. Is Paris Burning? Collins and Lapierre (10)
* All times E.S.T.