BOOKS IN BRIEF THe One-Evep Man is Kine, by Ian Brook (Putnam, $5.95). Ian Brook’s first book, the novel Jim- my Riddle, delighted a host of readers who had feared that this kind of thing had disappeared from the world with the early Evelyn Waugh. It was Black Mischief (well, almost) brought up to date —the setting an African state in the twilight days of colonialism, the cast of characters, from the do-gooding Lady MP to the har- assed District Officer, drawn with sardonic humor and telling ver- isimilitude. You had the feeling that Ian Brook, whoever he was, knew what he was talking about. Now, in The One-Eyed Man is King, Brook tells of his experi- ences as a field officer in the Brit- ish Colonial Service right after World War II, when Britain was. preparing Nigeria for independ- ence. Brook was a rebel in college, a young socialist in the Thirties, a volunteer for the Spanish Civil War who wasn’t accepted because although for Marx (‘Who wasn’t except stockbrokers?’’), he didn’t know enough about him. His anti- colonialist escutcheon was unblem- ished, until he went to Nigeria and saw for himself. His experience convinced him that the headlong rush toward independence would hurt the African—of whom he is obviously fond and for whom he is concerned—and events of the last year in Nigeria have borne out his analysis. All of which sounds very solemn, which Mr. Brook is
Nationa REVIEW not. Take this capsule comparison of the British and French as col- onizers. “French administration was far more capricious than Brit-_ ish, more personal. It was also gayer than ours and more brutal, less avuncular. I think the Africans preferred it to our eternal nagging auntieness. We were always on at them to blow their noses, use Fly Tox, send their children to school and construct latrines. The French were never prissy and always in- ealculable, rarely virtuous and never dull. The Africans often hated them but were never bored with them—which they were with us.” A fascinating book which will interest even those who are not interested in Africa. P. L. BUCKLEY THE Prntacon, by Clark R. Mollen- hoff (Putnam, $7.95). Once Mol- lenhoff plows through the earlier © history and gets to the McNamara years this chronicle of politics at the Pentagon comes to life. He shows that Mac has operated in a Byzantine fashion to place the very security of the nation in question. Anyone who reads the stories of Springfield, the TFX, the nuclear-powered surface fleet, the base closings, and the AMSA is almost forced to conclude that our SecDef is an ideological dis- armer. Mollenhoff shows that Mc- Namara not only has weakened our defenses but also has failed to be the “cost-efficient” paragon he is painted. Mac’s dealings with Congress and the brass at the Pentagon: (to say nothing of his attitude toward dissenters and other heretics) are described in a fashion to put one in mind of the most peremptory and imperious bureaucrat. Mollenhoff’s muckrak- ing gets rather brackish at times; but searcely so distasteful as Mc- Namara’s continued cavalierism (eg. his argument that a deployed ballistic-missile defense by the U.S. would engender an arms race—this after the Soviets have deployed theirs). W. D. JACOBS
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