Resonant Lives: Fifty Figures of Consequence

These 50 short profiles of political, literary and historical figures are a mixed bag. Nationally syndicated columnist Greenberg offers a wonderful debunking of Ayn Rand, punctures Nixon's pretensions as elder statesman and files perceptives sketches of Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, I. F. Stone, Jimmy Swaggart and Rudolph Hess. Though most of the pieces are no more than three or four pages in length, Greenberg musters literary insights into Flannery O'Connor's work and soundly takes to task senator Sam Ervin for his civil rights record. However, many of the pieces have the slapped-together quality of a newspaper column. Greenberg heaps scorn on Jesse Jackson and Andrei Gromyko, calls George Kennan an ``apostle of appeasement'' and condemns New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg for being ``monstrously, repeatedly wrong about what would happen in Cambodia after a Communist victory.'' (Aug.)