MEN OF GOOD WILL: Volume One— Jules Romains—Knopf ($2.50).
Romain Rolland wrote an epic about an individual (Jean Christophe); John Galsworthy wrote one about a family (The Forsyte Saga); but Jules Romains' magnum opus will seek comparison with an earlier, more comprehensive epic: La Comedie Humaine of Honoré de Balzac. No mere tetralogy, its author himself does not say how many volumes will go to make up the whole. Its purpose: to give a true picture of Paris in the 20th Century. No individual, no family history could adequately cover so broad...