Joe Alsop's Cold War: A Study of Journalistic Influence and Intrigue

From 1946 to 1958, Joseph and Stewart Alsop wrote an influential syndicated column for the New York Herald Tribune. Yoder maintains that Stewart (1914-1974) was the equal of his older brother as a reporter and writer; his book, however, is almost entirely about Joseph Alsop (1910-1989), probably because he is the more interesting of the two. Yoder tracks Alsop's journalistic causes through the 1950s: his early support for U.S. involvement in Indochina; his outspoken opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy; his defense of J. Robert Oppenheimer after the nuclear physicist's security clearance was suspended; and his crusade to head off U.S. inferiority in strategic weaponry (the so-called missile gap). Yoder reveals details of Alsop's harrowing experience in Moscow in 1957, when he was secretly photographed with a male sexual partner in his hotel room and threatened with blackmail. A columnist for the Washington Post, Yoder showcases Joseph Alsop as ``a prickly relic of a more individualistic past'' in the great age of the Washington political columnist. First serial to Civilization magazine. (Mar.)