A collection of stories from the Yiddish of the great Russian-Jewish folklore writer. Publication of an earlier collection, The Old Country (1946), contributed to a revival of interest in Yiddish folk literature, and this will appeal to the same market. Here are stories, of Tevye the dairyman, a Russian Casper Milquetoast, and other amusing anecdotes and character sketches at the turn of the century. Customs and traditions, match-making and marriage, joys and sorrows, threatened pogroms and persecutions, business, holidays, travels, food-all these are vehicles for the author's profound sense of tragedy, a feeling for death, a feeling of oneness with the universe- and at the same time the ability to laugh and make jokes under calamitous circumstances. Tevye has seven beautiful daughters whose marriages were his chief concern, but to their ultimate unhappiness and his deep concern, they chose to make their own decisions...Rather specialized appeal.