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The First Reader
By HARRY HANSEN

The Growth of Commercial Aviation.
Margaret Webster and Shakespeare
Human Stories of the Supreme Court.

And still they come - the new books - arriving in such numbers that I shall have to devote today's column to a brief summary of a number of recent publications.

Airways, by Henry Ladd Smith, is the history of commercial aviation in the United States. This is more than a chronicle of routes and planes. Nor is it entirely a summary of mechanical progress. The author, who wrote this book as the winner of the first Alfred A. Knopf Fellowship in History, is interested in all the political and economic ramifications of aviation in America. The humble growth of air lines, the operation under the various air-mail acts and government subsidies, the mergers and organization of transcontinental lines, lead up to the controversy over air mail during the administration of Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown. Few readers have any idea what the air-mail cancellations of 1934 were all about. Smith gives an account that proves a great deal more than politics entered into it.

The airplanes are now ready for startling expansion. War holds them up, but when it is over "they are ready to expand into a transportation system such as an H. G. Wells might dream about. Air transportation is just beginning." Let us hope it will get the green light soon. This book is an important historical record. (Alfred A. Knopf, $3.50.)

A New Way to Enjoy Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Without Tears, by Margaret Webster, belongs on the reading table of those who enjoyed Maurice Evans' Macbeth and Richard II. Miss Webster was associated with him not only in these productions but also in those of Hamlet, Henry IV, Part I, and [[page torn off]].