Random Notes

Last October Titles: Fiasco: The Real Story behind the Disastrous Worldwide Energy Crisis—Richard Nixon Oilgate (Times, $16.95), by Jack Anderson with James Boyd, argues that as long as the U.S. maintained its oil reserves it had the Mideast oil companies where it wanted them and blames President Nixon for not increasing that reserve with sufficient promptitude. (About that title: They don’t make songwriters like they used to.) . . . Delta Force: The U.S. Counterterrorist Unit and the Iran Hostage Rescue Mission (Harcourt Brace, $14.95), by Colonel Charlie A. Beckwith (U.S.A. Ret.) and Donald Knox, is an account of the training of Delta Force and of its botched performance in Iran. Beckwith—who was the Army commander of the ground forces of the ill-fated rescue mission—attributes its failure, in large part, to poorly planned and executed support.

Some November Titles: In The Barbaric Counterrevolution: Causes and Cure (University of Texas Press, $13.95) W. W. Rostow argues that since 1979 tight-money policies in Washington have brought about a “barbaric counterrevolution” that has caused suffering and economic hardship in American society. . . . Eliot Janeway, in Prescriptions for Prosperity (Times, $19.75), calls for government intervention in the economy as well as overseas, as a cure for the present-day economic malaise. . . . The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (University Press of Kansas, $25), by Vaughn Davis Barnet, is a political history of Johnson’s five years in office, praising the President’s achievements in social legislation (though Barnet believes there was too much of a good thing) and criticizing his conduct of the Vietnam War (Johnson, “too solicitous of public opinion,” failed to use selective force to the proper degree).

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

Last October Titles: Fiasco: The Real Story behind the Disastrous Worldwide Energy Crisis—Richard Nixon Oilgate (Times, $16.95), by Jack Anderson with James Boyd, argues that as long as the U.S. maintained its oil reserves it had the Mideast oil companies where it wanted them and blames President Nixon for not increasing that reserve with sufficient promptitude. (About that title: They don’t make songwriters like they used to.) . . . Delta Force: The U.S. Counterterrorist Unit and the Iran Hostage Rescue Mission (Harcourt Brace, $14.95), by Colonel Charlie A. Beckwith (U.S.A. Ret.) and Donald Knox, is an account of the training of Delta Force and of its botched performance in Iran. Beckwith—who was the Army commander of the ground forces of the ill-fated rescue mission—attributes its failure, in large part, to poorly planned and executed support.

Some November Titles: In The Barbaric Counterrevolution: Causes and Cure (University of Texas Press, $13.95) W. W. Rostow argues that since 1979 tight-money policies in Washington have brought about a “barbaric counterrevolution” that has caused suffering and economic hardship in American society. . . . Eliot Janeway, in Prescriptions for Prosperity (Times, $19.75), calls for government intervention in the economy as well as overseas, as a cure for the present-day economic malaise. . . . The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (University Press of Kansas, $25), by Vaughn Davis Barnet, is a political history of Johnson’s five years in office, praising the President’s achievements in social legislation (though Barnet believes there was too much of a good thing) and criticizing his conduct of the Vietnam War (Johnson, “too solicitous of public opinion,” failed to use selective force to the proper degree).