THE UNITED

Major MacKenna King, in his early thirties, a product of Long Island's north shore, Park Avenue duplex apartments, and Princeton and New York cafe society, arrived at Idlewild airport after seven years in Europe with the air force. Here he is welcomed by Julia Thatcher, his fiancee, and the daughter of a newspaper-magazine-film studio tycoon; his father, a successful broker; Shep Nichols, a reactionary columnist for the Thatcher newspaper syndicate; and Jenk Adams who wants to make a deal with Russia. Bypassing this world of striped pants and stick pins, MacKenna becomes an assistant delegate at the United Nations and sets up his own personal Jeffersonian ideal that the U.N. ""is still the last, best hope of man"". A topical excursion into the inner workings of the U.N. and diplomacy, but characters and action and ideas become heavy in a fictional framework.