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Don't Know Much About History By Kenneth C. Davis Crown, $24.95 History Back in the early 1960s, when I was growing up, there was a silly pop song called What Did Washington Say When He Crossed the Delaware? Sung to a tarantella beat, the answer was something like ''Martha, Martha, there'll be no pizza tonight.'' Of course, these lyrics were absurd; everybody knew Washington only ate cherry pie. On that December night in 1776, George may have told himself that if this raid on an enemy camp in Trenton, New Jersey, didn't work, he might be ordering a last meal before the British strung him up. But as the general rallied his ragged, barefoot troops across the icy Delaware, one of his actual comments was far more amusing than those lyrics. Stepping into his boat, Washington-the plainspoken frontiersman, not the marbleized demigod-nudged 280-pound General Henry ''Ox'' Knox with the tip of his boot and said, ''Shift that fat ass, Harry. But slowly, or you'll swamp the damned boat.''
Natural Order By Jonathan Penner Poseidon Press, $16.95 Fiction In my part of Connecticut-the northeast corner of Fairfield County-you shouldn't get an inch of snow in an April night. But this morning Marigolde's house and lawn are sheeted tight, like things I'm saving that the light might fade. ''Hi,'' she says, swinging open her door. I scrape my boots and say, ''You need a doormat.'' ''Don't bother. The carpet's shot.'' Her deep voice is loud, hoarse. ''From Helen,'' I say, holding out the fudge. ''She's a love.'' Marigolde takes it, squeezes and sniffs it. Myself, I don't like surprises, neither giving nor getting them. ''Have you had breakfast?'' I try to remember. ''Just coffee.'' She turns, leading the way. Marigolde strides like a man in battle gear, big feet in mannish suede shoes, thickly soled with butterscotch crepe. We cross the living room, whose fleur-de-lis wallpaper I hung so long ago that the time isn't surprising or sad anymore-the seams are curling and brown-and stand in the little kitchen. When I left, this whole place shrank. She asks me, ''Toast?''
Monica Heroine of the Danish Resistance By Christine Sutherland Farrar,Straus & Giroux, $21.95 Biography Monica Massy-Beresford was born at her father's house, 7 Eaton Square, London, at the height of a raging summer storm on July 12, 1894. As the gilt clock on the tower of nearby St. Peter's Church, where her parents had been married the ( year before, struck the night hours, Monica arrived in an England at the apogee of Victorian splendor. The queen's Diamond Jubilee was three years away, but already George Massy-Beresford, Irish landowner and sportsman, was busy arranging for seats in the Abbey. He was also eager to return to County Fermanagh in northern Ireland in time for the sailing regattas on Lough Erne. He had grown impatient awaiting the baby's arrival, for Monica was a week late. Much to the annoyance of his wife, Alice, they set off when their daughter was barely ten days old.
