BOOKS IN BRIEF owING to the pressure on our space
after the strike we must deal in a short and summary way with a number of books in this column. * * * Miss Davison's Our Prehistoric An- cestors (Methuen, 7s. 6d.) is attractively and amusingly written with some good illustrations including a comparison of the pose of modern and Neanderthal man: The average citizen of a modern industrial town stands exactly like the latter, alas ! * * -4' Herr Oswald -Spengler, of Munich, has written a portentous volume to. prove that our civilization is doomed. Some critics hold that The Decline of the West (Allen and Unwin, 21s.) is a work of greater significance than The Travel Diary of a Philosopher. We disagree. Count Keyserling looks on life, Herr Spengler seems to work chiefly in his library— none the less his book is important. * * * Miss Metcalfe- Shaw. in English ,Caravanners in the Wild West (Blackwood 21s.) writes pleasantly of the Mohave Desert, the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe cradled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains : a pleasant book. * * * Miss Jessie Mothersole has - pro- duced a very charming book on Czechoslovakia (" the land Of an unconquerable ideal " is the subAitle, but has an ideal ever been vanquished?) well illustrated in colour and black and white by herself and with delightful descriptions of the country. An attractively written book that makes, us want to go to Prague. (John Lane. 18s.) * * * The more 3o after reading Czechoslovakia by Miss Helena Schott (Black. 2s. 6d.). The wrapper portraying a delphinium-eyed Slav peasant girl with a gorget of beads is charming. So is the book. * * * The dolphin's brain is remarkable for its intelligence, says Dr. Cock, who has written a book to prove that we are not descended from monkeys. (Genesis v. Evolu- tion. Elliot Stock. 2s.) * * * An Island Hell (Philpot, 5s.) is a truly dreadful story of a prisoner in the hands of the Tcheka in the north of Russia : horror is piled on horror. It shall be reviewed later. * * * If you cook a seal flipper in an igloo it is likely to smell horribly : this and much other interesting information about the Arctic is in Mr. Earl Ross- man's Black Sunlight (Oxford University Press. 8s. 6d.). Mr. Stefansson writes the preface. * * * Another adventure book worth reading is Peary : The Man who Refused to Fail- by Mr. Fitzhugh Green. The North Pole is much in the air now and this is a topical volume. (Putnam. 25s.) * * * Mr. Vincent Sheean was one of the most successful of the newspaper correspondents with the Riffs. Adventures Among the Riffi (Allen and Unwin, 12s. 6d.) is interesting enough and hardly yet rieux jeu. * * * Messrs. John Lane send us a work by Mr. H. D. Daunt on The Centre of Ancient Civilization. It looks good, but only an expert can judge its soundness. * * * Eight Hundred Years of Harlington Parish Church, by Mr. Herbert Wilson (Mr. Smalley, Harlington, 8s., post free), is a well-illustrated and erudite volume whose title explains itself.
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