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# Books of The TimesBy CHARLES POORE"LIFE'S Picture History of World War II" is detonatec save of terpretative prose by Jorzos Passol, The Prospect Before Us is a gas, drepis pondered discussion of what's going on a the world and what may loom by Des Passes Our main guide this morning. Dos Passos, as we look at the ernisbattied present future and past.In ordinary life, when you are being shown through pic galleries, you Joba Dos Passos. sometimes get-80 terested that you lose sight of your guide. And much the same sort of thing happens. Mr. Dos Pasics isleading you through Life's Picture History of World War II There are fields sad towns and seas and beaches that may faterest you, for per- soical reasons, far more than they can ever interest many other people. You stop and look again and agar as these in the Medi- ferranean, the North Ame or the South Pa- cific, say, and let the rest of the party, guided by Mr. Dos. Passon go coThe whole book thours is magnificent and impressive performence procably become our day's equivalent it the Brady Oil War albums, unless someone ads a better way to keep a planetary co human scale. Hun- dreds of black and white grats are supplemented with maps and color plates of photographe and dozens of those tumously immaculate, war paintings.The seas churn, the suicents blaze, the new, Improved, economy-sze superhomogenized Bikini bomb raises its canhover head. But the measure of it all is man. The measure of it all is a submariner reparting intercom from the engine room. An Amencza citizen dead on a Leipzig balcony where he fel, covering the Sec. ond Infantry's adrance across a bridge. An Eng. lishman called Tedder a light to an an Amer ican called Spas: A German called Roramel: who hit our side so reruently and so hard in North Africa that we are apparently hell-bent: on endowing him, poschmirously, with super ences in Britain. And now they've their ordeal by fire to what Mr. Dos Passos calls their "ordeal by government" At all points he marutains his faith in man Free manPictures Not to Be ForgottenThere is a picture of the beaches of Namur on Kwajalein atoll that you won't soon forget The air seems to be made of the substance of death. There is a meture of Nazi troops gar rison troops, a: Lai-se-stepping through the. Are de Triomphe that you won't want to re member. There are prese: Japanese sukide planes, late in the wanen American ships that should be maced with all articien explaining how couplers we had benies the enemy long before the En Cartes over Hiroshima.19008.'50.One of the most dramatic pictures in the book shows half a page of a typewritten letter. Man name: Einstein is writing a man named Roose velt, ca Aug. 2. 1939. The letter begins: Sir: Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Salard which has been communicated to me in manu- script, leads me to expect that the element ura- nium may be turned into a new and more im- portant source of energy in the immediate fu- ture...". The free worlds immediate future" has been immeasurabiy lenghtened because Einstein wrote that letter.Winston Churchill, who is writing the greatest continued story of our day, said in THE NEW Toek TIMES last Thursday that it is easier to infuriats Americans than to cow them" He was speaking of the havoc the U-boats made along our coasts in 1942, when the war came very close to America, as you can see by this book's picture of an American tanker torpedoed off the Jersey shore. You can also appiy. Churchill's observation to many other pictures, particularly those of the black days after Pearl Harbor. The book's last shot shows a combat veteran who might be in Korea today. The final text by Mr.p Dos Passos is: "The Pacific phase of the second of the world wars of the bloody twentieth cen- tury had ended, but its ending brought no peace."In his own new book. "The Prospect Before." which contains stuff he first wrote for Life and for Harper's Magazine, Mr. Dos Passos: exrands on that. He takes us all over the wartime and post-war map, to Akron and Argentina England and Brazil, Lima and Kansas City. He arranges his bursting briefcases full of material into a series of lectures complete with Lecklers and other askers of penetratingly trofclesome ques- tions, that become light-heavyweight bouts with the leading problems of the world. What shall we do about capitalist cartels and Communist trusta? How can the institutions of democracy be safeguarded in a world where security is in short supply? What must we do to be saved? Little man, little world, there's little time. The battle is still onLessons at Hand EverywhereIf we want to geta notion of the price of failure. Mr. Dos Passhe says, "all we have to do is to visit the ruins of Berlin or to imagine the lives men live in Prague or Bucharest or Moscow." If we want to get get an inkling of the cost of survival, all we have to do is to read Mr. Dos Passos recollections his wartime, experi they've passed frem their ordeal by fire to what Mr. Dos Passos calls their "ordeal by government" At all points he marutains his faith in man Free man All over the world be cha easily with men and women of all degrees. There seems to be a breezy and unconstrained flowering of Mr. Dos Paass when he leaves New York. In Coon Rapids, powa, he drops into a coffee shop and finds that "Bob Garst was sitting in his customed corner laughing like hod split about: the difficulties of getting seed corn detasseled." In Feris a puffing fellow save: "A crious thing shout Lima the only history that has mainimur minds is that candlet colonial romance of the aged viceroy and the treas La Perrh-holTha: "candielit romance, as a matter of fact. hid much far-reaching influences that it ventur olid led to the broadening of the Pulitzer Prize cons the 1928 decoration could 10 Testaten Wilder's novel amut La Festthoil Rise of San Luis RevLIPKS PICTEER NODAR![photo of LIFE'S PICTURE HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II book cover]![photo of THE PROSPECT BEFORE US book cover]