Hardcover Nonfiction

by John Gunther · Harper

John Gunther's 'Inside' series were among the most popular books of reportage in the 1930s and 1940s. For 'Inside U.S.A., ' Gunther set out from California and traveled the entire country. His frank, lucid observations along the way -- on race relations, labor, the Tennessee Valley Authority, farm life, the politics of the big cities, and much else -- yield fascinating insight into life many years ago. Now on the brink of the millennium, this fiftieth anniversary edition of 'Inside U.S.A.' provides an invaluable picture of America as it was then, both for those old enough to remember it and for young people who may be astonished to see the ways the country has changed.

by Joshua Loth Liebman · Simon & Schuster

by Arnold Toynbee · Oxford University Press

Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History has been acknowledged as one of the greatest achievements of modern scholarship. A ten-volume analysis of the rise and fall of human civilizations, it is a work of breath-taking breadth and vision. D.C. Somervell's abridgement, in two volumes, of this magnificent enterprise, preserves the method, atmosphere, texture, and, in many instances, the very words of the original. Originally published in 1947 and 1957, these two volumes are themselves a great historical achievement. Volume 1, which abridges the first six volumes of Toynbee's study, includes the Introduction, The Geneses of Civilizations, and The Disintegrations of Civilizations. Volume 2, an abridgement of Volumes VII-X, includes sections on Universal States, Universal churches, Heroic Ages, Contacts Between Civilizations in Space, Contacts Between Civilizations in Time, Law and Freedom in History, The Prospects of the Western Civilization, and the Conclusion. Of Somervell's work, Toynbee wrote, "The reader now has at his command a uniform abridgement of the whole book, made by a clear mind that has not only mastered the contents but has entered into the writer's outlook and purpose."

by Pierre Lecomte du Nouy · Longmans, Green

by Elliot Paul · Random House

That you will be completely charmed by Elliot Paul's recollections of his boyhood is a matter beyond speculation. The turn-of-the-century scenes are not only dear to his heart but clear to his mind—albeit sometimes suspiciously so. But who will quarrel with so elegant a storyteller as Mr. Paul? Out of the sow's ear of common occurrence he makes a silken purse to hold the coins of our enchantment. Rare is the reader who will not delight in these fortified memories. Those who recall The Last Time I saw Paris know that Elliot Paul is incapable of being banal or tiresome. Thus there is nothing of the diary-like march of events in this record of his early years in the Boston suburb where he was born. Instead you will find a series of neatly dovetailed stories, anecdotes, character sketches, comedies, tragedies and singularly embellished observations all set out for your allurement like gems in a jeweler's window. Some of Mr. Paul's tales of the people who lived out their lives in Linden will make you laugh, some may even tempt a tear. There are a few—such as the story of Alice Townsend, the schoolteacher who found that her name had been written in snow with a stylus of strange origin—that may inspire the sincerest suggestion of a blush. Linden on the Saugus Branch, a volume complete in itself, is another segment in what will ultimately be Elliot Paul's life story: Items on the Grand Account. Both The Last Time I Saw Paris and The Life and Death of a Spanish Town are other books in this group.

by Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts · Doubleday

by Katherine Tupper Marshall · People's Book Club

by Harriet Lane Levy · Doubleday

by Henry Pleasants Jr., MD · Lippincott

by Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham · Harper

Discusses the sociological and psychological context of American women in the post World War II era.

by Ernie Pyle · Sloane

by Bartley C. Crum · Simon & Schuster

by Olga Lengyel · Ziff-Davis

In this harrowing memoir, Olga Lengyel recounts her experiences as a prisoner in the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during World War II. With unflinching honesty and vivid detail, Lengyel bears witness to the unimaginable horrors she endured, from the loss of her family to the daily struggle for survival in the face of unrelenting cruelty and deprivation. Through her powerful narrative, Lengyel not only honors the memory of those who perished but also offers a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the darkest of times.

by Betty MacDonald · Lippincott

by Richard H. Rovere · Farrarr Straus

by Edward R. Dewey and Edwin F. Dakin · Holt