Books published by publisher Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc

This presentation of Eve Currie's journey catches the world mired in war for just over two years. In the course of the book's unfolding, the United States enters the military phase after Pearl Harbor. This comes just as the European powers and China are only just establishing their military infrastructure, through Africa and the Middle East and Russia, and the Far East. German forces are meeting stiff resistance in Russia and North Africa, though the Japanese are pushing through South Asia, threatening India. Through the author's experiences, we read of the patriotism of the Free French, the exiled Poles, the British colonial hierarchy, the Russian Red Army, and the Chinese, both the leadership and the rank and file. We also get a glimpse of the struggles between local concerns and global warfare on all fronts. For example, she expresses the difficulty in understanding the Indian self-absorption in independence and lack of concern in face of the encroaching Japanese-Axis threat. In this unfolding chaos it is little short of amazing that any reporter is capable of traversing the globe and acquiring access to all the leading military and political leaders to learn of their plans and visions for the war itself and their hope for the aftermath, and witness their actual efforts and those of their followers.

This book has a bone to pick with you -- a funny bone. It is the story of a sergeant by a sergeant, all about said sergeant's adventures on the damnedest front of the war -- the home front! In case you didn't know, "Feather Merchants" is G.I. slang for civilians. Shulman, America's bright new apostle of zany, used to be a feather merchant himself, which makes him the perfect author for this roaring, good-natured travesty. It shouldn't happen to us civilians, but it has, and you had better read it "on account of the duration" as one of Shulman's characters describes the fix we're in. Behold the tale: As he leaves the peace and security of the air base, Sgt. Dan Miller is just a happy soldier going home on furlough. But he is ambushed by an advance patrol of feather merchants as he gets off the train in Minneapolis. They drive him home on black-market gas, gorge him on hoarded food, sir him down at a suspiciously new deluxe radio to hear the omniscient A. K. Hockfleisch's war-news broadcast. But the block-buster that completely shatters his illusions about the privations of his people comes from the most desirable feather merchant of them all, lovely Estherlee McCracken. She says that Sgt. Dan is a desk soldier and the hell with him. Buy bonds. Stung by his girl's rebuff, bewildered by the abundance of transportation and victuals in a world of (supposedly) no gas, no tires, no butter, and no steaks, Dan goes to the Sty to drown his sorrows in the watered whiskey and fabulous floor show offered in that charming establishment. But it is his undoing, for there he gets himself rumored into the role of a hero -- with explosive results. THE FEATHER MERCHANTS is the first book about civilians by a soldier, and maybe we had it coming to us. Only Shulman could have written it, only those with a wide-open sense of humor ought to read it, and only William Crawford could have drawn...