An unorthodox, outspoken and occasionally brilliant monologue, filled with astonishing connections and tidbits drawn from unlikely sources. The author, a prolific historian, laments the substitution of publicity for real debate over political issues and the pervasiveness of bureaucratic mediocrity. In foreign policy he longs for the yesteryear of Churchillian heroics and is contemptuous of "the so-called Third World" nations who have turned the United Nations into "an instrument for a ritual comedy, for speeches and tales by hosts of idiots, signifying nothing."