The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War

Part memoir, part history, part essay, this is a lively, anecdotal account of Attwood's involvement in the Cold War as a journalist and diplomat. A foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune after World War II, he became editor of Look and later publisher of Newsday. Attwood refers to his 40 years' experience as a jumble of unrelated happenings, and his sprawling account does not lend itself to brief summarization, for it includes descriptions of meetings with world leaders, an around-the-world tour with Adlai Stevenson (which led to his appointment as ambassador to Guinea and later to Kenya) and his unchaperoned wanderings behind the Iron Curtain. Attwood's refreshingly informal style, his sense of humor, his keen eye and ear make this an enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable read. The memoir is far more than mellow reminiscence, however: Attwood is devastating in his remarks about the insanity of the arms race and American obtuseness toward the Russians. As a people, he observes, ""we seem to have decided to stop thinking.'' (July