Every day, five days a week, for more than

thirty-five years, Sydney J. Harris has writ-

ten a column, usually in eight tight para-

graphs, on nearly every subject under the

sun. These models of succinctness, ranging

from rearing children to restructuring soci-

ety, have been published in book form--

this is the eighth such collection--for old

and new readers around the world.

Pieces of E~qht is an apposite title also

because a minimum of dross is to be found

in these valuable reflections on the human

condition in all its aspects. Called by Clifton

Fadiman "America s finest living aphorist,"

and by Milton Mayer "the most cosmic

journalist we possess," Harris habitually

reaches a dimension underlying current

affairs and surpassing headline events.

No other American journalist has been

memorialized in so many hardcover vol-

umes of his daily work, reprinted in so many

diverse publications, or anthologized so ex-

tensively in college texts. (His essays are

studied even by college students in Japan in

their English classes.) His column is syn-

dicated in several hundred newspapers

throughout the United States, usually on

the editorial page, where he provides the

discerning reader with a philosophical per-

spective as rare as it is useful.