THE WHOLE WORLD'S IN HIS HAND

If you are neither surprised nor inspired by the thought of ""a New England housewife"" (which Mrs. Fletcher chooses to call herself, despite the fact that this is her fifth published work) paying a call on the Dalai Lama to ask him rather breathlessly, ""Do you think that spiritual force can ever conquer armed force?""; or if you do not believe that establishing Bible classes on commuter trains is a very practical way to begin saving the world, then this is probably not the book for you. Mrs. Fletcher's main purpose is a ""grass-roots"" review of the Third Assembly of the World Council of (Christian) Churches, which was held in New Delhi in 1961. She also includes a multitude of portraits of other ecumenically-minded Christians, and accounts of her visits with missionaries and their charges in Hong Kong, Nepal, and Japan, on her way home. She writes with an utter sincerity which makes for vivid, persuasive, and often very moving---if sometimes uneven---reading.