Books in Brief

A Nation of Sheep, by William J. Lederer (Norton, $3.75). Does anyone doubt that the American people know little and care less about the world? Or that these lazy lambs are daily led to slaughter by secretive bureaucrats and a slipshod press? If so, this book will leave him bug-eyed, aroused and ready to carry out Captain Lederer’s orders. Which are: Everybody ought to read a Good Newspaper (The New York Times’); Mom should stir up the clubwomen about World Affairs; Dad ought to interrogate Sis and Junior about Laos over dessert, and everybody should write his congressmen. Such is the raw meat thrown the simple-minded by this fact-and-fancy sequel to The Ugly American. Oh, this is supposed to be a straight book, and it may appear so to the unknowing. But the venomous chapter on Chiang Kai-shek amply proves that old salt Lederer still doesn’t let a fact or two get in the way of a good yarn. Why, he shouts, weren’t we told about Chiang’s crookedness? But

we were, endlessly, while China fell. The value of this “expose” may be judged by the author’s comment to the Honolulu Advertiser: “I went to Harvard to have most of the book checked. The chapter on China was checked by Professor John Fairbank.” Formerly of IPR.

A Nation of Sheep, by William J. Lederer (Norton, $3.75). Does anyone doubt that the American people know little and care less about the world? Or that these lazy lambs are daily led to slaughter by secretive bureaucrats and a slipshod press? If so, this book will leave him bug-eyed, aroused and ready to carry out Captain Lederer’s orders. Which are: Everybody ought to read a Good Newspaper (The New York Times’); Mom should stir up the clubwomen about World Affairs; Dad ought to interrogate Sis and Junior about Laos over dessert, and everybody should write his congressmen. Such is the raw meat thrown the simple-minded by this fact-and-fancy sequel to The Ugly American. Oh, this is supposed to be a straight book, and it may appear so to the unknowing. But the venomous chapter on Chiang Kai-shek amply proves that old salt Lederer still doesn’t let a fact or two get in the way of a good yarn. Why, he shouts, weren’t we told about Chiang’s crookedness? But

we were, endlessly, while China fell. The value of this “expose” may be judged by the author’s comment to the Honolulu Advertiser: “I went to Harvard to have most of the book checked. The chapter on China was checked by Professor John Fairbank.” Formerly of IPR.