Knucklehead Truman

Douglas Johnson

  • The Eisenhower Diaries edited by Robert Ferrell
    Norton, 445 pp, £15.25, April 1983, ISBN 0 393 01432 0
  • The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography by Thomas Reeves
    Blond and Briggs, 819 pp, £11.95, June 1983, ISBN 0 85634 131 2
  • The past has another pattern by George Ball
    Norton, 544 pp, £14.95, September 1982, ISBN 0 393 01481 9
  • Torn Lace Curtain by Frank Saunders and James Southwood
    Sidgwick, 361 pp, £7.95, March 1983, ISBN 0 283 98946 7
  • The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert Caro
    Collins, 882 pp, £15.00, February 1983, ISBN 0 00 217062 0
  • The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson by Ronnie Dugger
    Norton, 514 pp, £13.25, September 1982, ISBN 0 393 01598 X
  • Years of Upheaval by Henry Kissinger
    Weidenfeld/Joseph, 1312 pp, £15.95, March 1982, ISBN 0 7181 2115 5
  • Richard Nixon: The Shaping of his Character by Fawn Brodie
    Norton, 574 pp, £14.95, October 1982, ISBN 0 393 01467 3
  • Haig: The General’s Progress by Roger Morris
    Robson, 458 pp, £8.95, October 1982, ISBN 0 86051 188 X
  • Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President by Jimmy Carter
    Collins, 622 pp, £15.00, November 1982, ISBN 0 00 216648 8
  • Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency by Hamilton Jordan
    Joseph, 431 pp, £12.95, November 1982, ISBN 0 7181 2248 8
  • Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977-81 by Zbigniew Brzezinski
    Weidenfeld, 587 pp, £15.00, April 1983, ISBN 0 297 78220 7

Westward look the land is mediocre: eastward look the land is sombre. Those who are between can only find this dispiriting. But whereas for Western Europeans the dismal spectacle of the Soviet élite has assumed a mysterious inevitability, the second-rate quality of American government remains surprising and is all the more irritating for that reason. Who can accept that the richest of all nations should be governed by such unimpressive men? Who can understand how successive Presidents of the United States, supposedly the most powerful men in the world, should be uniformly second-rate?

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