Roger Angell (1920- ) is best known for his writing on sports, baseball in particular, for which he has received frequent accolades and acclaim. However, before making his name as a sportswriter he was contributing fiction, commentary and humour to various publications, most notably The New Yorker, where he became a fiction editor in 1956. All of the stories in The Stone Arbor appeared in that magazine, and the writing throughout the volume exhibits the immaculate sheen of the typical mid-century New Yorker story. It has been said that readers of The New Yorker want and expect to see themselves reflected in its pages, and that is probably true of Angell’s stories, which among its cast of characters feature commuting businessmen, salesmen, privileged landowners, young single working women and members of New England’s moneyed upper crust. Angell’s people are facing a variety of challenges to their well-being, some brought about by money problems or a change in circumstance, others by events taking place or decisions made beyond their sphere of influence. In “Castaways” a businessman away from home listens in on a conversation taking place in a hotel bar among three men—a boss and two underlings—and is sent into a rage by the Machiavellian brand of leadership the domineering boss spews to his companions. In “The Stone Arbor,” elderly Jason Lowery clashes with his son over a highway construction project underway adjacent to his property that, as he sees it, threatens his way of life. In “In an Early Winter” Amanda has impulsively married Joe after a very brief courtship, but upon meeting his parents is left wondering what she has got herself into. And in “Cote d’Azur” a brother and sister come face-to-face with their father’s uncertain legacy. In each of these and other stories in the volume, Angell establishes an easygoing rapport with the reader only to turn things upside down at some point when his people come to an awkward realization or behave irrationally or let their temper get the better of them. There is nothing particularly ground-breaking going on here, but it is all so impeccably done that it is impossible not to appreciate the significant achievement these stories represent. ( )