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The article focuses on six new novels, "Benton's Row" by Frank Yerby, "South Street" by William Gardner Smith, "The Day of the Lion" by Giose Rimanelli, "Trial" by Don M. Mankiewicz, "Out Went the Candle" by Harvey Swados, and "The New Men" by C.P. Snow. Frank Yerby's Benton's Row is the greatest novel published in 1954. Between November 29 and December 31 it sold 54,724 copies. William Gardner Smith's "South Street," to put it conservatively, is ten times as valuable as any of Mr. Yerby's novels. It is an honest, competent novel about Philadelphia's South Street and the Afro-Americans' who live there.

Presents letters to the editor referencing articles and topics discussed in previous issues. "Who is 'Women'," which focused on male and female roles in the society; "Subsidizing the States," which discussed the plan of the U.S. to turn back to the states a portion of each year's federal income tax collections; "The Curse of Official Culture," which discussed the hope that men of honesty and power still exists.

This article focuses on the book "The Closed Harbor," by James Hanley. Hanley's most recent novel, The Closed Harbor, is an excellent naturalistic nightmare. A captain who did not go down with his ship and who killed his nephew when his efficiency was questioned on shipboard, he spends his life wandering from cafe to brothel to shipping companies, trying to affirm the manhood he does not believe he has and to get the position he hopelessly hopes for. Ultimately the conflict between what he wishes of and for him self and what he knows is all he can get or be drives him to insanity. Hanley's favored character in The Closed Harbor, Labiche, probably represents his own present point of view.

The article discusses novels "The Streak," by Paul Darcy Boles; "The Bridges of Tokori," by James A. Michener, and "The Good-for-Nothing," by James Yaffe. Boles' novel shows that he has paid a nominal percentage in experience for what he knows about automobiles and those who race them. His Italian hero, Tagli, knows car racing as well as Hemingway's matadors know bull-fighting and experiences with much the' same intensity. Michener, in his fifth book, still has not learned to go much deeper than what the sophisticated public can be presumed to want and expect nor has he discovered how to make ideas stem naturally from the lives of his people.

The article reports on various books. Some of them are: "Men Like Shadows," by Dorothy Chars; "The Marriage of Elizabeth Whitacker, by Jacobine Hichens; "Hotel Talleyrand," by Paul Hyde; "Simple Takes a Wife," by Langston Hughes; "Not Heaven," by Waldo Frank. Among the pleasant and unimportant novels published this and every year, Dorothy Charques' Men Like Shadows and Jacobine Hichens' The Marriage of Elizabeth Whitacker deserve a high place. Jacobine Hichens' The Marriage of Elizabeth Whitacker is a sensible and expert novel about an Anglican and a Catholic who fall in love in modern times. Paul Hyde Dormer's Hotel Taileyrand gives you the same agreeable feeling of having been there you get from Mrs. Charques' novel about the Third Catsade and is a good deal less realistic than Jacobine Hichen's story of a marriage.

The article focuses on several books: "The Return of Lanny Budd," by Upton Sinclair; "Far From the Customary Skies," by Warren Eyster; "Corpus of Joe Bailey," by Oakley Hall; and "Amos Berry," by Allan Seager. Sinclair's eleventh book about Lanny Budd is full of good will, good history and bad writing. The author feels many who will read the book can gain from it a better knowledge of what caused the Cold War and what has caused it to continue. The book is not a good piece of fiction. Eyster's book "Far From the Customary Skies" is better constructed and better written than "The Return of Lanny Budd." Still this is not a novel that fulfills as much as it promises.

The article discusses several books on various issues. Some books that are mentioned in the article are "The Second Scroll," by A.M. Klein "This Man and This Woman," by James T. Farrell and "Melville Goodwin, USA, by John P. Marquand. The author states that Marquand's novel has delightful pages, particularly when the character Sid Skelton is with characters Gilbert Frary or Dottie. However, the book is heavy with unconvincing flashbacks to the earlier life of the character General Goodwin, who does not become, even in the forward action, much more than an oversimplification of what one hopes generals are not.

The article focuses on four Italian novels. These are "Scirocco," by Romualdo Romano; "A Hero of Our Time," by Vasco Pratolini; "The Brigand," by Giuseppe Berto; and "The Conformist," by Alberto Moravia. "Scirocco," winner of the Hemingway award in Italy for 1949, is a disgusting novel about a disgusted school teacher who does nothing and cares for nothing except the relative cleanliness of hunting. Italy's past and present. Vasco Pratolini is at his best when he describes his "Hero of Our Time," an innocently brutal fascist of sixteen in the depths of a sadistic affair with the morally supine widow of a former comrade.