Mr. Kissinger's latest volume of memoirs covers the period from Richard Nixon's departure from the White House in August of 1974 to Gerald Ford's departure in January of 1977. Whatever conservatives may have thought about some of Mr. Kissinger's policies, his analysis is superb: "[Nixon] has some personality aspects-I don't know from what they derived, since I only met him after he had been elected-but he had a great fear of being rejected face to face. He had a need to affirm himself with dramatic statements.... And all of these tendencies come to appearance in the tapes.... He was perfectly capable of firing off a string of orders which those who knew never would have carried out.... You can read some bloodcurdling pronouncements [cf. Theodore H. White on the Enemies List, Firing Line #S192]. But what is never pointed out is, none of them was ever carried out. And none of the people who heard it said, 'Yes, Mr. President, we'll do it tomorrow morning.' Or reported back to him the next day even the slightest execution of them."