OF DIAMONDS AND DIPLOMATS

The author ought to get at least a vote of thanks from every organization to which social secretaries, public relations and promotion personnel belong. Miss Baldridge addresses these reminiscences to the newest graduates of those Good Colleges for Women that annually provide the rank and file of the fields devoted to making other people or products look good. Those who do these jobs best share a passion for the synchronization of the finicking details that make an ordinary dinner party an unforgettable event or turn a public appearance by a VIP into an historic moment. Instead of lecturing on the subject, which would be bound to bore, she laughs her way backward through the years in which she learned as she went and she pays tribute to what the charm schools call poise but what she more accurately labels ""bluff"" as the characteristic that carries the unskilled through their self-teaching moments of crisis. She's been social secretary in the Embassies of Paris and Rome and to Jacqueline Kennedy during the White House years. She was Tiffany's first p.r. supervisor and now operates her own p.r. consulting firm out of Chicago, where she recently married. . . a happy ending to a happy book about how one person had fun being overworked and not overpaid.