The People’s Book of Medical Tests, Dr....

The People’s Book of Medical Tests, Dr. David S. Sobel and Dr. Thomas Ferguson (Summit) predicts that the health-care system is rapidly acquiring an image designed by the preventive-minded, health-active layman, rather than by the technological, disease-oriented physician. That sounds optimistic, but if (it’s) correct, this book should help patients achieve the best of all possible worlds: a reliance on self to maintain good health and a familiarity with the technical when the need arises” (Harry A. Nelson).

Confrontation and Detente: American-Soviet Relations From Nixon to Reagan, Raymond L. Garthoff (Brookings Institution); Sovieticus, Stephen F. Cohen (Norton). Raymond “Garthoff’s special contribution is his talent for looking at the same event through first American, then Soviet eyes to make it clear how differently they see things.” Stephen “Cohen is another first-rate analyst of the way Americans and Soviets look to one another. . . . Cohen’s slim book is like Los Angeles freeway signs that are designed not to show people how to get somewhere but to remind people who already know where they are going that their off-ramp is approaching” (Jack Burby).

Letitia Baldrige’s Complete Guide to Executive Good Manners (Rawson) assumes that “the stuff of daily life is of immense fascination and merits our closest attention” (Carolyn See).

The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics, Simon Leys (Holt, Rinehart & Winston). “It is important to distinguish Leys’ anti-communism from the garden variety in American popular thought. No Moral Majoritarian, he is extremely well-informed, and driven by passion for China rather than by any advocacy of the West. . . . His heroes are the Chinese people, both intellectuals and common folk. . . . China guides as deeply perceptive and stubbornly honest as Leys are truly rare” (Perry Link).