Books, Arts & Manners

Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, by Patrick Seale (Random House, 340 pp., $22)

PATRICK SEALE is, let us say, highly informed about and closely connected to Syria and its leadership, and to Arab nationalist radicals in general. His 1985 book, The Struggle for Syria, 1954- 1958, is something of a classic, while his 1991 study, Assad, has led some observers to dub him a court historian.