These selections from the author's journals over a 61-year period (1927-1988) deal with landscape and culture in Europe and America and Mr. Kennan's private reflections thereon-not with the political and diplomatic issues with which he is so prominently identified. There are passages of haunting beauty and sadness and throughout a sense of loss for a powerfully imagined older and better world. Who in this century has written so much, of such quality, over so long a period of time?