Books: Little Disturbances of Woman Later the Same Day

To residents of Greenwich Village, Grace Paley is the friendly neighborhood radical. Every sunny Saturday afternoon this year the diminutive grandmother has been on duty at the busy intersection of Sixth Avenue and Eleventh Street, buttonholing passersby on behalf of the Women's Pentagon Action. "Would you like to sign a petition against U.S. military intervention in Central America?" she asks. For the 37 years she has lived in the Village, Paley, 62, has engaged in countless curbside solicitations as well as rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins. Her causes have been as local as keeping traffic out of Washington Square Park and as...