RECENT & READABLE

John Adams and the American Revolution, by Catherine Drinker Bowen. A brisk retossing of the salad days of the steady, commonsensical second President of the U.S., which turns up a personality much crisper than most historians have allowed him (TIME, June 19).

The Encounter, by Crawford Power. Crime & punishment in a rag-tag underworld teaches proud Father Cawder that "it's no part of a priest's business to pass on people like a judge"; an unsentimental first novel on a Graham Greene-ish theme (TIME, June 12).

The Yankee Exodus, by Stewart H. Holbrook. How & why generations of 19th Century New Englanders took the trail West; an affectionate retracing by a Vermonter whose own family stayed home (TIME. June 12).

Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, by Amy Kelly. A handsome, beguiling biography of the greatest dynast of her day, who married two kings, bore two more (TIME, June 12).

Captain Sam Grant, by Lloyd Lewis. A rich reconstruction of Ulysses Grant's early years, in a biography that strips much of the stiffness and stuffiness from his legend (TIME, May 29).

D. H. Lawrence: Portrait of a Genius But..., by Richard Aldington. A lively life of the icon-smashing author of Lady Chatterley's Lover (TIME, May 29).

No Time to Look Back, by Leslie Greener. A South African novelist finds a Christlike figure among the prisoners in a Japanese P.W. camp, traces his influence on prisoners and guards in a moving, if sometimes oracular story (TIME, May 22).

The Barkeep of Blemont, by Marcel Aymee. What happens to wine-loving, live-and-let-live Bartender Leopold when he is caught in the postLiberation politics of his French town (TIME, May 15).

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