Midnight on the Desert

Midnight in the Desert is a new personal history by a distinguished writer. It is a revealing portrait of one of the most original minds of this century. And it is more. For Americans, the book is a relentlessly honest, thought-provoking, sometimes startlingly frank mirror through which we may view and judge ourselves. Two years ago Mr Priestly spent a winter at work in Arizona. The impressions of America which he gained on that visit form the skeleton structure of this book and serve as points on the contemporary world. Among the topics which he discusses absorbingly are the drabness of industrial civilization, the fascination which the theater exerts upon the writer, the meaning of D. H. Lawrence in a sex-ridden world, co-education, the function of the creative mind, the cultural arts, and America as the model for the new Russia. A wholly fascinating book for anyone with an explorer's mind.