Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

She had discovered, within a short time, that doctors were not the cormorants (often ignorant, but always insatiable) she had supposed them to be, and that certain causes produced certain effects;...

Faces at the Bottom of the Well, by Derrick Bell. (Basic Books, $20.) A law professor argues that racism is an integral, permanent and irradicable component of our society.

adopts the policy of encouraging local contractors and insists on developing their capabilities and on completing the mainstays they require to take charge of implementing the state's construction projects and to fully Qatarize this sector.