BETWEEN THE THUNDER AND THE SUN

He's done it again, this author of Personal History and Not Truth but a Sword. In a sense this is quite different. It has the same quality of immediacy, the same sureness of foresight, the same gift for being at the right place at the right time (for a correspondent, that is -- though he probably curses his missing Pearl Harbor by inches); once again he shows his ability to blend fast paced adventure with human bits of anecdote and by-paths of quiet descriptive writing. Where then -- is this different? There is more analysis of mood and emotional values, of the whys and hows before the events; there are more sharp contrasts. The opening chapters seem to find him audience to the fiddling while Rome burned-albeit with full and angry awareness of the burning. An idyll of a Salzburg Festival, of holidays on the Riviera -- and then the sweep of events, from 1937 onto a post mortem on Pearl Harbor, all recorded with vigor and color, and an occasional whirl for the socialites.