Editors' book-shelf;

              THE EDITORS' BOOKSHELF
Although publishers continue to talk about "summer reading" books for warm, lazy days, most people are as busy in the summertime as at any other time of year. Without intending any official endorsement, the editors of H&S Reports offer on this page four titles for people who keep on going al-though the thermometer is on the way up. All four should be available for ex-amination at a well-stocked bookstore.
Business Adventures, by John Brooks. Weybright & Talley, 1969, 389 pages, $10.
The trained eye of an outside ob-server sometimes discovers drama in events so close to our daily lives that they look commonplace to us. John Brooks does this for accountants in this fresh collection of his dozen most fas-cinating and amusing tales of Wall Street and the modern corporation, many published earlier in The New Yorker, where he is the principal writer about business.
Here is the story of the Edsel, that $350 million mistake which failed in part from overheated promotion and 29 despite the best market research avail-
able. Here, its enormous complexity unravelled with the novelist's talent for storytelling and suspense, is what actually happened in the stock market's "little crash" of 1962. The history and peculiarities of the Federal income tax are presented with appreciation for two remarkable former Commissioners of Internal Revenue, Mortimer M. Caplin and Sheldon S. Cohen, who, Brooks says, discharged their duties "at a high degree of moral tension." The ritual of the annual stockholders meeting is de-scribed, as are the rise of Xerox and the troubling episodes at GE and Texas Gulf Sulphur.
The author is faithful to the evi-dence and is generous with opinions that deserve the public accountant's attention, whether or not he accepts them. Families that may sometimes wonder what it is about the business world that fascinates H&S husbands and fathers will find part of the an-swer in this book.
The National Forests of America, by Orville L. Freeman and Michael Frame. Putnam in association with Country Beautiful Foundation, 1968,194 pages, $12.95.
Our national parks are well docu-mented in printed matter designed for people planning their vacation trips, but America's national forests have been less thoroughly described and publicized. This large-format book in clear text and appealing photographs offers the city dweller a strong induce-ment to visit the forest areas. Orville L. Freeman is the former Secretary of Agriculture, and Michael Frame, his collaborator, is one of the country's leading writers on conservation. They have organized their book by topics, rather than geographical regions, with chapters on such subjects as trees, scenic roads, wildlife, scenic rivers, hiking and U.S. history as it has left its marks within the national forests. Maps and lists of basic information on each of the forests and other areas under federal protection give the reader a solid basis on which to plan a trip.
The Golf Immortals, by Tom Scott and Geoffrey Cousins. Hart, 1969, 272 pages, $6.95.
Golf how-to books, if not a dime a dozen, are plentiful. They usually carry the by-line of one notable pro-fessional, and stress his way of play-ing the game. In this colorful set of sketches of 16 of the greatest golfers in history, two of Britain's most ex-perienced golf writers have distilled
what they have learned by observing and interviewing the expert players from Harry Vardon down to the pres-ent. Most important lesson is that we cannot all play the game the same way, in view of our differences in strength, build and temperament. The reader is given insight into Tommy Armour's ideas on timing, Henry Cotton on the grip, Bobby Locke on putting, Billy Casper on positioning the feet for the short iron shots, Gary Player on power-ing the ball, and many more. One short paragraph, in the chapter on Bobby Jones, will come to mind every week-end on a crowded course while one waits and waits for the creeping four-some ahead to hole out:
"Jones made no fuss about his put-ting-no meticulous picking up of non-existent impediments, no microscopic study of the grass blades, no contor-tions in the address, no special align-ment of the putter. The stroke was, to him, of the greatest importance, and was best done naturally and without fuss."
A Treasury of Humorous Quotations,
by Herbert V. Prochnow & Herbert V. Prochnow, Jr. Harper & Row, 1969, 398 pages, $6.95.
An accountant who is called on to speak in public for the first time, whether within the professional fra-ternity or to an outside group, may know his subject thoroughly but he may not be confident that he can "put it across." The fact is that excellent public speakers are made, not born. This has been true from the time of Demosthenes through Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan down to our own day. A touch of wit that brings speaker and audience together in a laugh is one of the marks of the effec-tive speaker, no matter what his subject.
This well organized reference book, carefully indexed by topic and by per-son quoted, delivers more than 6,6oo items that can be plucked from its pages and inserted into a speaker's script, just as if he had spent the pre-vious weekend in the library reading the great wits of history. With a little deft thumbing here one can come up with apropos quotations on such widely varied subjects as budgets, busi-ness, New York, work, optimism, opin-ion, golf, fish or government. And the quoted, among hundreds of others, can be. Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb, Oscar Wilde or W. C. Fields. Used with care the nuggets of humor in this book can make a good talk sparkle. •