First Encounters: A Book of Memorable Meetings

This collaborative effort, which began as a feature in the Atlantic, brings together 65 short essays that describe first meetings between two well-known people. Nancy Sorel's engaging text is illustrated by her husband Edward's witty and stylish color drawings. We learn that when FDR told French wartime leader Charles de Gaulle he could not support him because he hadn't been elected, the touchy French officer replied that Joan of Arc had not been elected either. The Sorels have selected from diverse fields for their duos, including politics (Richard Nixon and Madame Mao), literature (Henry James and Rupert Brooke), theater (Paul Robeson and Peggy Ashcroft) and philosophy (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir). Many couples were chosen tongue-in-cheek, for instance, the accidental encounter in an elevator between filmmaker Orson Welles and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, on whom Welles based his unflattering portrait in Citizen Kane. A browser's delight. (Oct.)