THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT

....categorizes the World War II returnees to civilian life in what looks like a ""frantic parade to nowhere"" as Thomas R. Rath, ex-paratrooper, trained to kill, settles into the Schanenhauser Foundation and seven years of living -- rather unsatisfactorily -- in Westport with his wife Betsey (dissatisfied), and three children. The possibility of public relations with United Broadcasting Corporation (Rockefeller Plaza) keens his feeling for the scent of money; his grandmother dies and leaves him enviable property on the Sound; he learns the girl he had loved in Italy has had a son, and all his problems touch on the lives of others. Jostled by new superiors, he still proves out on his speech for the broadcasting company's president, Hopkins, on a mental health project; he fights off community pressure to deny a new school for the district in which his inheritance lies and where he has moved; he takes the chance as Hopkins' right hand man -- and moves out when he discards the price he would pay for the rewards he will get, and lines up Betsey to stand with him in supporting his son in Italy, in working out a new community from the Sound estate, and in exchanging pessimism for a tolerant wisdom. The harsher tones of Executive Suite and The Hucksters modulate here to some coincidental, connubial concerns in a book that reads easy -- and lingers lightly.