AMERICAN HEROES OF THE 20th CENTURY

For kids who are ""just curious,"" not compelled, here are personal profiles reflecting and reinforcing the public image of twenty notables. The information was called from contemporary accounts in The New York Times (Mr. Faber's base for many years), and transformed into good feature writing; the result is consistently interesting, with some recognition of the subject's weaknesses and only occasional adulation. The list is too diverse to summarize: JFK, Lindbergh, Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, MacArthur, Richard E. Byrd, Gordon Scagrave, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Goddard, FDR, Audie Murphy, Amelia Earheart, Edward R. Murrow, William J. Donovan, Carrie Chapman Catt, Jonas Salk, Alan Shepard, Ernie Pyle, Marian Anderson, Dwight Eisenhower. Each gets about nine pages, which will include a full-page photo and appropriate on-the-spot shots. Because these aren't complete birth-to-death biographies, this is not a natural for school assignments; it is a very agreeable introduction, and kids can extend their acquaintance by reading the books by and about the ""heroes"" mentioned in the well-selected bibliography.