A new venture for Carleton Beals, in a huge, full-bodied picaresque novel projected into 1950 and set in South America. His intimate knowledge of the mood and feel and character of the Latin Americas gives color to his background, though I confess to failing to sort them out, one from another, as the sweep of war eliminates border lines, and cancels out, for the most part, local differences (perhaps this is part of his intention -- an object lesson in Latin American total war, with Japs and Nazis and Fifth Columnists doing their worst). His story assumes that there has been a half-baked peace forced by impatient politicians in 1944; and that by 1950, the world, an armed camp in which the enemy has once again gone faster than the ""victor"", is at war again, with South America a battleground, and Montes, dictator of Peru, alone on the fence. Adventure -- passion -- romance -- and an American idealist and promoter of a project for an ideal mid-continent cooperative project, is the center of the action. Here's a book that should meet the needs of those who want adventure, history in the making, and yet want to get away from the realism of current war books. There is nothing in the pushing forward into the near future that seems disturbing; it is simply a bit of machinery for motivating a South American front. Good reading of its kind.