The most widely read book review in New York City was The New York Times Sunday Book Review. It gave the lead position this week to Eudora Welty's debut novel, DELTA WEDDING. Charles Poore gave it a rave but the book did not receive uniform praise elsewhere. His colleague, Orville Prescott, for one, did not share his enthusiasm in the daily paper. Among the non-fiction titles reviewed this week were a two books on the Soviet Union,including THE PEOPLES OF THE SOVIET UNION, a paean from fellow traveler Corliss Lamont. Robert Lasch addressed the severe post-war housing shortage in BREAKING THE BUILDING BLOCKADE. A summary of these and other reviews as well as the regular book review features this week can be found here.
The chief rival to the Times book review was the Sunday Herald Tribune Book Review. There was considerable overlap in readership between the two. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COUNTRY, an attempt to explain the singularity of this region by historian Carey McWilliams had the lead position. In addition to a more hesitant recommendation of Delta Wedding, the Review included a critique of Albert Camus' THE STRANGER. The French Existentialist movement which had taken flower during the Nazi occupation, was new to New Yorkers. Reviews and features from the Herald Tribune Book Review are here.
Edmund Wilson, who reviewed books for The New Yorker was arguably the critic the literati most respected. However this week A.J Liebling wrote the magazine's lead review, an evaluation of TOP SECRET, a critique of the Allied war effort that was hard on Eisenhower whom the mainstream press had virtually canonized.. The author was the controversial Ralph Ingersoll, the driving force behind the New York left wing daily tabloid, PM. Liebling covered journalism for The New Yorker. More about this review as well as the capsule reviews of other books that the magazine considered significant is here.
Time magazine, which was highly influential at this time, also reviewed Top Secret and Delta Wedding this week. For its take, see here.
Among the books reviewed in the daily book column in The New York Times this week was I CHOSE FREEDOM, an expose of the workings of the Soviet state written by a prominent defector, Viktor Krevchencko, that had the Left in an uproar. See here for more about this book, the review and the reaction.