Books: Washington at War

REVEILLE IN WASHINGTON — Margaret Leech— Harper ($3.50).

This book makes the U.S. Civil War real, tragic, fantastic and much more read able than World War II. Author Leech's (Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer) literary sector is the home front at the point where all its conflicts were most fiercely focused —Washington, D.C. Her purpose: to show the city and the nation that converged on it in 1860 to 1865.

She works in masses of racy and ironic detail, leaves almost nothing out, has no use for filters. By the open sewers of Swampoodle (an Irish slum),...