Volume 5, Number 8 · November 25, 1965
International Thriller
By Gwyn Jones
The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation
by R.A. Skelton, by Thomas E. Marston, by George D. Painter, with a Foreward by Alexander O. Vietor
Yale, 291 pp., $15.00
Westviking
by Farley Mowat
Little, Brown, 494 pp., $8.95
The Norsemen
by Count Eric Oxenstierna
New York Graphic Society, 320 pp., $8.95
The discovery and publication of The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation is a gratifying event not only to scholars, on the whole an easily gratified tribe, and not only to those who for a variety of praiseworthy reasons must rejoice to see the eastern shore of North America appear on the map for the first time in history, but also to everyone with a sense of drama and an aesthetic appreciation of how things should be done. The Map itself is exciting, and the story of its recovery from centuries of oblivion, though somewhat drily recorded, is worthy of it. For what we have here is not only a first-class contribution to historical and cartographical knowledge, but a thriller not to be missed by anyone with fifteen dollars, an awareness of the past, and a belief that 'books too have their fortunes.'
Review, 2555 words
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