Random Notes

■ Just Out: Found: an optimist. Jerome Tuccille, 1974 Libertarian candidate for governor of New York, rubs his hands as he asks, Who’s Afraid of 1984? (Arlington, $7.95). . . . Hugh Sidey did the text and Fred Ward took the pictures for Portrait of a President. Mr. Ford, that is (Harper, $12.95). . . . Jennie, by Peregrine Churchill and Julian Mitchell, is a life of Churchill’s mother with emphasis on her letters (St. Martin’s, $10). . . . No Left Turns is another of those kiss-and-tell books on the FBI by ex-agent Joseph L. Schott. It’s published by Praeger; yes, Praeger used to publish for the CIA; but that seems to have ended when the cover was blown around 1967; so, no, it doesn’t look like an Agency book ($7.95). . . . Neither, emphatically, is Inside the Company, the diary of renegade agent Philip Agee (Straight Arrow, $9.95).

John Osborne winds up The Last Nixon Watch (New Republic, $7.95). . . . Now it’s Breslin with a Watergate tract, How the Good Guys Finally Won (Viking, $6.95). . . . James Dines categorizes the economic mess as The Invisible Crash (Random, $10.95). . . . Who can resist the titles Jack Douglas gives his books? Latest is Benedict Arnold Slept Here: Jack Douglas’ Honeymoon Mountain Inn (Putnam, $7.95). . . . NR contributor Francis Russell anatomizes the 1919 Boston police strike in A City in Terror; stylishly, of course (Viking, $10). . . . Alexander Dolgun’s Story is the memoir of a U.S. Foreign Service officer who was railroaded into the Gulag for nearly a decade (Knopf, $10). . . . Volume Two of D. Clayton James’ The Days of MacArthur covers World War II (Houghton, $15).

Featured Tags

■ Just Out: Found: an optimist. Jerome Tuccille, 1974 Libertarian candidate for governor of New York, rubs his hands as he asks, Who’s Afraid of 1984? (Arlington, $7.95). . . . Hugh Sidey did the text and Fred Ward took the pictures for Portrait of a President. Mr. Ford, that is (Harper, $12.95). . . . Jennie, by Peregrine Churchill and Julian Mitchell, is a life of Churchill’s mother with emphasis on her letters (St. Martin’s, $10). . . . No Left Turns is another of those kiss-and-tell books on the FBI by ex-agent Joseph L. Schott. It’s published by Praeger; yes, Praeger used to publish for the CIA; but that seems to have ended when the cover was blown around 1967; so, no, it doesn’t look like an Agency book ($7.95). . . . Neither, emphatically, is Inside the Company, the diary of renegade agent Philip Agee (Straight Arrow, $9.95).

John Osborne winds up The Last Nixon Watch (New Republic, $7.95). . . . Now it’s Breslin with a Watergate tract, How the Good Guys Finally Won (Viking, $6.95). . . . James Dines categorizes the economic mess as The Invisible Crash (Random, $10.95). . . . Who can resist the titles Jack Douglas gives his books? Latest is Benedict Arnold Slept Here: Jack Douglas’ Honeymoon Mountain Inn (Putnam, $7.95). . . . NR contributor Francis Russell anatomizes the 1919 Boston police strike in A City in Terror; stylishly, of course (Viking, $10). . . . Alexander Dolgun’s Story is the memoir of a U.S. Foreign Service officer who was railroaded into the Gulag for nearly a decade (Knopf, $10). . . . Volume Two of D. Clayton James’ The Days of MacArthur covers World War II (Houghton, $15).