Whether it is China in the Thirties and Forties or the presidential campaign trail in the Sixties and Seventies, Mr. White brings to the task a superb eye for detail and the ability to discern a coherent pattern. One sample, in response to the question "whether he understands himself to be marching away from the dogmatism so generally associated nowadays with American liberalism": THW: "Let's say that there is about conservatives and about liberals a quality of religion sometimes useful, sometimes offensive.... There are holy truths. The liberal holy truths at the moment are holy truths I share: that we should have peace in Vietnam, that civil rights should be pushed as quickly as possible. Now in the name of those holy truths the witch burners among the liberals will try to bum anybody who doesn't want instant peace in Vietnam, anybody who does not proclaim the cause in Vietnam to have been utterly ignoble."