IV. Editor, Thinker, Colleague

Jim Burnham was so refined and restrained that I nearly fainted the first (of two) times I ever heard him use a vulgar word.

A State Department official had just announced, with moral pomp, that the U.S. was withdrawing recognition of Rhodesia. I found Jim alone in his office on a quiet midsummer day. He commented: “Sometimes in this world you have to throw your friends to the wolves. But you don’t have to talk a lot of shit about democracy while you do it.”