THE GREAT CIRCLE

This seems to be left-overs of this and that, pretty much of a potpourri, a personal chronicle, in Beals' usual high-spirited and high-colored manner. He opens with Valencia, prior to the war, then on to Africa, Islam, Algiers, Tunis, where the exploitation of North Africa by the French promises a Fascist heyday; Sicily, Rome, Greece, Turkey, finally Russia, and the most interesting section of the book. Odessa and the oil fields of Baku, Moscow-met throughout by hostility to the outsider, locked doors and jacked-up prices, and a people under the throttlehold of a dictator. Then Berlin on the eve -- and Mexico, for the last third of the book. He rehashes the old political machinations of Calles, the murders of Obregon and Machado. Most of the material is from five to ten years old, and lacks his customary timeliness. But he has always a flair for the dramatic and the human.