KONRAD ADENAUER: MEMOIRS, 1945-1953

Most dedications have little to tell us about the books they head; Dr. Adenauer's, however, despite its brevity, is explicit. ""To My Fatherland,"" is all it says, but it sums up a long lifetime of political endeavor. The present volume of that life story comprises an amazing Journey: from a Gestapo prison where the officer in charge asks Adenauer not to commit suicide (nearly 70 years old, he presumably had ""nothing more to expect from life""), to Arlington Cemetery where a 21-gun salute greets the same old. unbending man as he comes to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In between is the even more amazing resurrection of West Germany from total defeat to a position of great strength and prosperity. Certainly no other single person left so indelible a mark on the shape and character of the new Germany, and while little that he has to disclose to us now comes as a surprise, it is still enormously helpful to have it all in his own terse, rigid prose. Like what he did or not, no one can deny the stature and dignity of this man, or detract from his accomplishment.