Books in Brief

Campustown USA, by Mark Graubard (Campus Scope Press, 299 pp., $3.95). Written late in the Fifties and only now published, this didactic novel effectively refutes the notion that the pre-SDS campus was silent and somnolent. It certainly wasn’t for the faculty. Graubard vividly recreates the times and the Causes: the Wallace campaign (Henry, that is), End the Cold War and, preeminently, the anti-McCarthy hysteria that made brave men whisper in the Faculty Club of “Midwestern University.” I recognize the real-life model on which Midwestern is based; Dr. Graubard has included some local crusades that were mounted in the Eisenhower years and that I recall. It all really happened, pretty much the way he says it did. The book shows a keen eye for the foibles of the academic liberal—and it points, though it does not state, the relevant lesson: that in this way the seeds for the campus turmoil of the Sixties were sown.

Second in Command, by Edward R. Murphy Jr., with Curt Gentry (Holt, 452 pp., illus., $8.95). Former Lieutenant Edward Murphy was Executive Officer of the “spy ship” Pueblo, as the newspapers of the day delighted in dubbing it. Murphy is a teetotaler, fussy over details and generally the diametric opposite of his former commander, Lloyd M. Bucher. They are not, and never seem to have been, what could, even generously, be called friends. Their one shared characteristic is the desire to justify their actions (and intention) in print. In doing so, Lieutenant Murphy takes on Bucher and the Navy for incompetence and after-the-fact whitewashing. He comes across as a carper, but a carper with several legitimate points to make. His professional co-author, Curt Gentry, is well qualified as a specialist in the literature of blundered military surveillance operations (he also co-authored Gary “U-2” Power’s book, Operation Overflight). With all its faults, Second in Command warrants reading if you are really interested in the events leading up to the Pueblo fiasco. Murphy does not seem a very engaging fellow, but he has a head on his shoulders which is probably considerably superior to his old chief’s. Certainly, if some of the precautions Murphy claims to have urged had been taken, the disaster would have been less than total, and far less humiliating to the United States. Personal malice accounts for some of the Murphy criticisms, but hardly for all of them. As a result, his book is of genuine value in considering this small but important episode of our recent history.

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Campustown USA, by Mark Graubard (Campus Scope Press, 299 pp., $3.95). Written late in the Fifties and only now published, this didactic novel effectively refutes the notion that the pre-SDS campus was silent and somnolent. It certainly wasn’t for the faculty. Graubard vividly recreates the times and the Causes: the Wallace campaign (Henry, that is), End the Cold War and, preeminently, the anti-McCarthy hysteria that made brave men whisper in the Faculty Club of “Midwestern University.” I recognize the real-life model on which Midwestern is based; Dr. Graubard has included some local crusades that were mounted in the Eisenhower years and that I recall. It all really happened, pretty much the way he says it did. The book shows a keen eye for the foibles of the academic liberal—and it points, though it does not state, the relevant lesson: that in this way the seeds for the campus turmoil of the Sixties were sown.

Second in Command, by Edward R. Murphy Jr., with Curt Gentry (Holt, 452 pp., illus., $8.95). Former Lieutenant Edward Murphy was Executive Officer of the “spy ship” Pueblo, as the newspapers of the day delighted in dubbing it. Murphy is a teetotaler, fussy over details and generally the diametric opposite of his former commander, Lloyd M. Bucher. They are not, and never seem to have been, what could, even generously, be called friends. Their one shared characteristic is the desire to justify their actions (and intention) in print. In doing so, Lieutenant Murphy takes on Bucher and the Navy for incompetence and after-the-fact whitewashing. He comes across as a carper, but a carper with several legitimate points to make. His professional co-author, Curt Gentry, is well qualified as a specialist in the literature of blundered military surveillance operations (he also co-authored Gary “U-2” Power’s book, Operation Overflight). With all its faults, Second in Command warrants reading if you are really interested in the events leading up to the Pueblo fiasco. Murphy does not seem a very engaging fellow, but he has a head on his shoulders which is probably considerably superior to his old chief’s. Certainly, if some of the precautions Murphy claims to have urged had been taken, the disaster would have been less than total, and far less humiliating to the United States. Personal malice accounts for some of the Murphy criticisms, but hardly for all of them. As a result, his book is of genuine value in considering this small but important episode of our recent history.