Points for a Compass Rose, Evan S....

Points for a Compass Rose, Evan S. Connell Jr. (North Point). Originally published in 1973, this is “a poetic meditation on the vast, savage history of the human race, ranging from the neolithic to the nearly contemporary, rummaging restlessly through mountains of facts, events, rumors, hypotheses, nonsense and curious lore” (Robert Mezey).

The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam, Daniel C. Hallin (Oxford). “A painstaking analysis” of media coverage of Vietnam from 1961-1965 that makes important points about “the dangers we face if we allow any government to pull the media into line by an appeal to patriotism or national interest” (Phillip Knightley).

The Long Walk, George La Fountaine (Putnam’s). A U.S. medical corpsman meets a numb, half-dead prisoner of war just before he leaves Vietnam in 1973 and becomes haunted by the POW’s rehabilitation long after he’s “back in the world.” The novel contains “some of the more compelling prose yet written about the consequences for this country of its involvement in Vietnam,” (Tom Clark).

Latin American Political Movements, edited by Ciaran O Maolain (Facts On File) “seeks to furnish a kind of score card for the whole bewildering array and succeeds to a gratifying degree” (David F. Belnap).

The All of It, Jeannette Haien (Godine). Father Declan is a 63-year-old priest in the West of Ireland. In this short novel, “whose lyricism alternates between a considerable power of evocation and a strenuously Irished-up syntax, Jeannette Haien confronts this downright man of rules with an undermining torrent of life; and undermines him” (Richard Eder).