Current Books In Brief (June 1955 | Volume: 6, Issue: 4)

Current Books In Brief

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Authors: Bruce Catton

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June 1955 | Volume 6, Issue 4

The Great Reconnaissance , by Edward S. Wallace. Little, Brown & Co. 288 pp. $5.

This book is principally a retelling of the exploratory expeditions made in the Far West by that nowvanished organization, the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. The work began with a lengthy survey of the U.S.-Mexican border as it was established by the war with Mexico, continued on with various attempts to chart routes for transcontinental railroads, included the first surveys of the Grand Canyon region, and wound up with the entertaining and potentially valuable attempt to make the camel a beast of burden on the southwestern deserts. Altogether, these explorations were done competently and with a minimum of the kind of accidents that make headlines, and Mr. Wallace has provided a readable account of an interesting and little-known chapter in American history.

Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt , by Helmut de Terra. Alfred A. Knopf. 386 pp. $5.75.

Baron von Humboldt was a fantastic character—a scientist whose range went from geology through meteorology and botany to ethnology, terrestrial magnetism and archaeology—and in the first half of the Nineteenth Century he made himself one of the world’s best-known and must useful citizens. Since he concerned himself with almost everything, roamed from Peru to Tibet and wrote voluminously about his travels, his studies and his casual thoughts, this attempt to get all of the man into one volume occasionally makes him sound like a dilettante. But as a one-man academy of science he had genuine stature, he sparked the imagination of men like Darwin and Jefferson, and he deserved the title Emerson bestowed on him—a “wonder of the world.” This volume offers a compact and exceedingly readable introduction to one of the most influential characters of the Nineteenth Century.

The Assassins , by Robert J. Donovan. Harper & Brothers. 300 pp. $4.

In this book a competent newspaperman considers the seven occasions on which men have either killed or have tried to kill a President of the United States. (The list includes one attack on an ex-President, Theodore Roosevelt, and one on a President-elect, Franklin Roosevelt.) The result is an instructive book, which makes it clear that the Secret Service is fully justified in the elaborate safeguards it throws around our Presidents. It is clear, likewise, that the threat to a President’s life usually comes from lone-wolf crackpots rather than from political conspirators. The Booth conspiracy (itself an addle-brained plot if there ever was one) and the effort of the Puerto Rican terrorists to kill President Truman appear to have been the only cases with real political motivation; the real danger usually comes from the deranged fancies of some individual.

Wilderness Messiah: The Story of Hiawatha and the Iroquois , by Thomas R. Henry. William Sloane Associates, Inc. 274 pp. $4.

A veteran newspaperman