SIX PRESIDENTS, TOO MANY WARS

by Bill Lawrence ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 17, 1972

A series of great events, powerful men, and good stories reduced to the diminutive if genial level of the narrator who, as a 20 year-old U.P. reporter inadvertently exposed the bad-faith agreement by G.M. in the Flint strike of 1937, and then moved on to a long, successful career as a New York Times correspondent. Lawrence got key stories on the Willkie campaign, at 27 captured the Moscow assignment, toured Nagasaki just after the bomb fell, broadcast the Dewey-Truman upset, whizzed around Korea with Edward R. Murrow, alternately attacked and drank with Joe McCarthy, golfed with JFK and, after a feud with Clifton Daniel, left the Times for ABC, where he claims to have sparked Agnew's attack on the media. Lawrence refrains from documenting what Gay Talese called his ""womanizing"" but every bottle of Scotch over the years is catalogued; though pardonable, the stream of name-drops remains less than engaging; and often the third-hand hilarity goes flat. Some of the stories however are memorable -- trying to determine whether the Russians or the Germans shot the Polish officers at Katyn, playing tennis with the Rumanian Prime Minister, exposing the misdeeds of Air Force Secretary Talbott, etc. As a journalist Lawrence puts the ability to keep a secret above all other virtues; his chief example is JFK's faith in him for not betraying deliberations about Secretary of State candidates. He has a touching belief that the President loved him for himself and not the Times connection, despite the Kennedys' well-known efforts to woo the press; and when JFK chose to break a story in the Times Lawrence records it as a personal favor. No revelations appear concerning the paper's internal shakeups -- this is strictly ""a personal account of my professional career,"" a bonhomous record of no particular value beyond its entertainment potential.

Pub Date: April 17, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Saturday Review Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION