The Forrestal Diaries

Of the growing number of memoirs by our leading officials in the recent past, these pages from the diary of the late Secretary of Defense are at once the most revealing and the least satisfying: they produce a remarkable sense of the author's bluntness and of the immediacy of his concern with many vital issues, combined with some uncertainty as to whether they are a complete representation of the situation as it was or even the full and considered judgment of their author. The task of editing, exceptionally difficult in this case, has been handled excellently by Mr. Millis.