Can My Bridesmaids Wear Black?: -- And 325 Other Most-Asked Etiquette Questions

The doyenne of the drawing room ( The New Etiquette ) conducts a symposium designed to end debate on vexing issues: Are doggy bags taboo in a ``really good'' restaurant? (no); how to plan a baby shower (``Choose a color scheme. Yellow is an obvious one''); how everyone can help keep public rest rooms clean (``Always wipe the toilet seat when you have finished using it''). Aside from an unusually detailed and thoughtful chapter on bereavement, little here will interest or educate the reader with even a modicum of common sense or imagination. Stewart shares 1980s mores but her tone remains prim and humorless, a pinched-mouthed Mary Poppins: when a truth-seeker asks if she was wrong to have switched her place card at a reception, Stewart scolds, ``Absolutely. I trust you will never do it again.'' Stewart's bland homilies recall Colonel Chiswell Langhorne's pronouncement, ``Etiquette is for people who have no breeding; fashion for those who have no taste.'' (Oct.)