The Greats

The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World, by John O’Sullivan (Regnery, 360 pp., $27.95)

JOHN O’SULLIVAN does not, in this dazzling new book, indulge in schadenfreude. But he permits the reader this pleasure. “That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years,” John Kenneth Galbraith said in 1984, when the ground was already shifting, “is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene.” Those “in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse,” Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said in 1982, as the earth rumbled around him, are “kidding themselves.”

About the Author

Michael Knox Beran

Michael Knox Beran, a lawyer and writer, is the author of WASPs: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy.

The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World, by John O’Sullivan (Regnery, 360 pp., $27.95)

JOHN O’SULLIVAN does not, in this dazzling new book, indulge in schadenfreude. But he permits the reader this pleasure. “That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years,” John Kenneth Galbraith said in 1984, when the ground was already shifting, “is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene.” Those “in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse,” Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said in 1982, as the earth rumbled around him, are “kidding themselves.”