ROBERT F. KENNEDY: THE BROTHER WITHIN

Mr. Thompson and Miss Myers, both working journalists, would have us believe that Senator Karl Mundt was the only respectable opponent of Bobby Kennedy and that only ""fears of lynasty"", equated with similar feelings about Catholicism and youth, will keep the American electorate, should they ""find themselves still in need of Kennedy leadership"" in 1968, from staking ""their hopes on Robert Francis Kennedy"". Such is the tenor of the reporting. Though the President's younger brother is not exactly canonized, he manages to emerge sufficiently sanctified so as to emit something of a glow in the political arena. He is the best among family men, a veritable prince to his employees. His advice to Martin King to the freedom riding movement is described as ""an impatience born of Robert Kennedy's simple basic philosophy that law and order must prevail, that the national interest is paramount to all others, that the beating of drums and the flailing of arms is so much lost motion when issues can be settled in an orderly and quiet way without attention-attracting antics"". He would be, if elected, a moderate liberal ""without veering far left of center"". He understands Reverend Martin Luther King as well as Senator John McClellan. The best William O. Douglas could do in his introduction was a mild ""This book appears to give an accurate factual account of this young man's life to date"". The facts, indeed, are here; but more careful readers will concern themselves with those that are not here.