THE HERALD TRIBUNE BOOK REVIEW
The Herald Tribune Book Review was a worthy competitor to the Sunday Times Book Review. Irita Van Doren, ex-wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning Columbia University professor Carl Van Doren, was the editor. In 1940 it was widely alleged that she was having a romantic involvement with the Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. People saw Willkie and Van Doren as models for the couple portrayed in "State of the Union," playing on Broadway in 1946.
The lead review this week was of Southern California Country by Carey McWilliams. Other non-fiction books receiving considerable attention were The First Freedom, about the dangers of the concentration of media ownership; Breaking the Building Blockade, about the nation's housing crisis and The Faith of a Liberal. Memoirs and autobiographies were well-represented. NON-FICTION BOOK REVIEWS
Two modern literary classics, Eudora Welty’s first full-length novel, Delta Wedding, and Albert Camus' The Stranger, were among the fiction titles reviewed. The Review also included a Spring roundup of new fiction.FICTION REVIEWS ►
Mary Lamberton Becker edited BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ►
Will Cuppy wrote the weekly roundup of new mystery and detective novels. CRIME AND MYSTERY ►
The most controversial feature of the Book Review was the back-of-the-book column,"Turns With a Bookworm" by radical libertarian and vituperative New Deal critic Isabel Paterson, a sub-editor of the book department since the 1920s. TURNS WITH A BOOKWORM ►
Other regular features and columns appearing that week included:
THE READER'S GUIDE: Literary notes and reader comments compiled by May Lamberton Becker.
BOOKS RECEIVED: A comprehensive list of books that had been sent to the newspaper for review that week.
NOTES FOR BIBLIOPHILES: Written by Lawrence C. Roth, for those interested in books as objects to be collected. This week his lead item was on an exhibit of "Texas Rarities" at the William C. Clement Library of the University of Michigan.
The best seller list of the Herald Tribune Book Review was a complicated chart indicating the top six bestsellers in both fiction and nonfiction at each of 56 bookstores across the country. By 1946 The Times Book Review had ditched a similar format for a simple list that combined all sales figures. The Herald Tribune ordered the books by the number of mentions rather than total sales. A book had to be reported by at least three stores to make the chart, although a side note listed those that had two mentions. The result was a list longer than the Times. By its nature, it over-weighted smaller cities. A number of regional bestsellers appeared at the bottom of both the fiction and non-fiction lists. The Times compilation also had questions of accuracy in these days before computerized sales figures. Both newspapers ended up with somewhat similar lists.
All of The Times 16 top-selling fiction titles appeared on the Herald Tribune top 24. The King's General was first with 45 of the 56 stores surveyed reporting it among their top six. Arch of Triumph was second with 37 stores reporting it. These two novels also headed The Times fiction list but in reverse order. FICTION BEST SELLERS ►
There was more discrepancy between the titles on the Herald Tribune non-fiction best seller chart and that of The Times. NON-FICTION BEST SELLERS ►