Bread and Wine, Ignazio Silone (Signet: $3.95)....

Bread and Wine, Ignazio Silone (Signet: $3.95). Revolutionaries tend to generalize, gathering strength by glossing over differences in style and substance of dissent. Novelists, in contrast, tend toward the particular, illuminating the minute and many-layered dimensions in what only seems to be simple. Writers who are also revolutionaries must do both, of course, hoping and fighting for social change while recognizing the importance of political liberty and the dangers of dogma. While Orwell and Camus struggled with this synthesis, the conflict between the urgency of earthly matters and the importance of spiritual transcendance is presented more literally in this 1936 novel. “Insatiable, restless and often undisciplined” in his opposition to the totalitarianism of Mussolini’s Italy, Pietro Spina, our protagonist, finds it necessary to go undercover as Paola Spada, a priest. Soon, Spina becomes Spada, and Spada, in turn, becomes an idol for some, giving rather than receiving, striving “to be free, loyal, just, sincere and disinterested.” Despite hackneyed and idealized images (Spina always seems to be passing young, glowing “peasant women with babies in their arms”) and simplistic dualisms (Spada is bordered on one shoulder by spiritual Cristina and on the other by passionate Bianchini), Silone has a sense of the importance of individual awareness that is as mature as Camus’ and a vision of the future that is more thoughtfully optimistic than Orwell’s.

The Fifty-Minute Hour, Robert Lindner (Dell: $6.95); Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist, R. D. Laing (McGraw - Hill: $4.95). What conventional psychiatry views as a degree of professional distance between doctor and patient, these authors see as a chasm. In his own private practice, Robert Lindner rarely sticks to “The Fifty-Minute Hour,” in one case driving at night to the home of a woman traumatized by bulimia; in another, walking with a rapist-murderer through the hall of a prison, trying to establish contact. Admittedly showy at times, Lindner’s account vividly reflects the idealism of his era, when psychoanalysis was just beginning to catch on in America. A novice practicing in Britain’s mental health - care wards at the time, R. D. Laing was less-than-enthusiastic about the practice of keeping “undesired people . . . in undesired states of mind.” In 1964, Laing began an experimental health - care ward in London that featured “no locked doors, no psychiatric treatment to stop or change states of mind, no staff, no patients.” Laing’s defense for this radical new approach hinges on his belief that psychiatrists were too quick to diagnose “psychotic ideation” (in which the patient is not responding to the surrounding environment) rather than “psychotic reaction” (a behavior pattern that can be modified when psychiatrists strive to interact with patients). The notion of a “friendly” doctor-patient relationship baffled Laing’s colleagues. “What if a patient asked you for a glass of water?,” a senior psychiatrist asks Laing. “I would give him or her a glass of water and sit down in my chair again,” Laing responded. “Would you not make an interpretation?” “Very probably not,” said Laing. “I’m totally lost,” came the response.

Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams, David Grambs (Workman: $5.95); A Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, From the 16th Century to the Present Day, Eric Partridge, edited by Paul Beale (Stein & Day: $24.95, hardcover) . After buying this book, these publishers claim, “you’ll never be at a loss for words.” The promise holds true for those interested in sounding sagacious rather than intelligible. But most of these words and phrases are too anachronistic or obscure to “catch” anyone. One would not have expected that so many of the words in “A Dictionary of Catch Phrases” have faded away “like old soldiers” (from the British Army’s parody of the song, “Kind Thoughts Never Die”), for when he died in 1979, Eric Partridge had just finished updating this 1977 book to include American phrases; his editor, Paul Beale, continued the revision process until 1985. Still, these expressions, from “I’ll be a ding-dong daddy!” to “Dig it!,” are not representative of the American vernacular, perhaps because Beale and Partridge have refrained from crowding their text with phrases drawn from TV and film. The words in David Grambs’ book at first seem even more obscure, but greater scrutiny soon reveals recognizable suffixes and prefixes, mostly playful and funny, sometimes overly specific (gynotikolobomassophile--a nuzzler and nibbler of women’s earlobes) and discordant (ichthyophagist--a fish eater). “Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams” is an equally entertaining and more informative alternative to Rich Hall’s more popular “Sniglets,” which creates words (“hozone”--the hiding place for socks that get lost in the dryer) without regard for the English language in much the same way a baby might decide to call a toy a “glopf.”

By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, Paul Boyer ($11.95). First, the atomic bombs fell, then the Axis powers, and then, many people’s confidence about the future. Said John Holmes, a minister quoted in these pages, “Everything else seemed suddenly to become insignificant . . . . The summer beauty seemed to vanish, and the waves of the sea seemed to be pounding upon the shores of an empty world.” If there was a time for establishing a cooperative, global village, this was it. And indeed, even such conservative journals as Reader’s Digest began calling for a world government. Why, then, did this notion vanish so suddenly, and, more disturbingly, turn into its opposite, the Cold War? Paul Boyer never answers this question directly, but he does suggest that U.S. culture from 1945-50 made it easier for Americans to forget: Norman Vincent Peale celebrated the notion of “thinking positive,” atmospheric tests no longer made the news, and enthusiasm about nuclear power plants camouflaged anxiety about nuclear destruction. Unfortunately, Boyer prefers satirizing American ignorance to understanding its root causes. He agrees with a study showing that Americans understand the bomb’s destructive potential, but not the political issues that might prompt its use. But rather than calling for an activist movement based on education, he devotes most of these pages to poking fun at popular sentiments by quoting from cartoons, songs and articles: a California company marketing a line of jazz recordings under the “Atomic Label” (complete with the picture of a mushroom - shaped cloud); a full - page “cheesecake” photograph of a well - endowed MGM starlet who had been officially dubbed “the Anatomic Bomb.” Light humor notwithstanding, the message of this book is ultimately pessimistic, following Einstein’s belief that “the atomic bomb changed everything--except the nature of man.”