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DOWN THE DRAIN

Far Tortuga is so seaworthy a novel that to praise it is to place it in extremis. We are all so thirsty for good sea stories these days that even a shallow book like Jaws gets compared to the Odyssey and sells...

The annual autumnal crunch of sports books has begun and, before it overwhelms us, here are some brief notes on four-books that, for one reason or another, readers may want to know about:

Certainly the best time to read a book about baseball is right now—in the quiet of early winter, with a fire in the fireplace and the ballplayers off managing their restaurants, their organ combos and their...

39—top, from "Raiders of the Deep" by Lowell Thomas, © 1928 by Doubleday and Company, Inc., reprinted by permission of the publisher; bottom. Brown Brothers42—John Light47—Kenneth MacLeish63-67—drawings by John...