Escott Reid ranks close to Lester Pearson as a major figure in Canadian external affairs in the middle years of this century. This fine memoir takes us from his youth in Canada, through Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, his tenure as secretary of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in the 1930s to high positions in External Affairs thereafter. American readers will be stimulated by the author's critical but fair comments on U.S. policy at several important junctures.