Books: Autumn Leaves

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(2 of 2)

THE SCROLLS FROM THE DEAD SEA, by Edmund Wilson (121 pp.; Oxford; $3.25), and THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, by Millar Burrows (435 pp.; Viking; $6.50), deal with the fascinating manuscripts—Biblical texts, commentaries and Essene writings—found in a cave near the Dead Sea by two Arab boys in 1947 (TIME, Sept. 5). Wilson's book is a graceful, thorough piece of reporting. Burrows, a Yale expert, analyzes the scrolls in detail, shows at precisely what points they may fill in chinks in Biblical history.

THE SORROWS OF TRAVEL, by John Breon (250 pp.; Putnam; $3.50), is a novel about that old literary subject, restored to life by the G.I. Bill of Rights: young Americans in postwar Paris. First Novelist Breon writes knowingly enough about boys and girls who came to create and stayed to drink, but he cannot make their problems seem important, and perhaps they should have stayed home in the first place.

LIBERATED FRANCE, by Catherine Gavin (292 pp.; St. Martin's; $5), is a concise, highly readable history (1944-53) in which De Gaulle is often the villain, France herself always the heroine. Able Scottish Historian Gavin, who has a sharp gift of phrase and a keen eye for the human touch, can marshal statistics and evoke a spring mood in Paris with equal grace.

A GERMAN OFFICER, by Serge Groussard (218 pp.; Putnam; $3), draws a bone-bare portrait of the classic Wehrmacht officer in defeat. Promising young French Novelist Groussard follows a crippled colonel as he scrabbles among the ruins for food, stonily defends his wartime acts, and keeps his chilling faith in Holy Germany.