THE first reaction of the educated public to a new volume of political memoirs is one of wariness. Will this be another pièce justicatif — or an example of Establishment iconography aimed at glorifying distinguished pomposity—or both combined, as in the much overrated Stimson memoirs. Such doubts are usually fortified by the carping reviews of the woodwork academics that book section editors increasingly retain to pick away at the reputations of public figures; their typical complaint is that the author "has added nothing new to scholarly understanding."

This is hardly the way to approach the memoirs of either a great personality or a leading actor in fateful events, and Averell Harriman was both. For six years, he met and negotiated on virtually an equal level with Churchill and Stalin. Although nominally only a presidential envoy, he was in fact the living embodiment of American industrial and technological might at a time when Britain and Russia were fighting for survival.

Still, these factors alone might not justify another account of the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin relationship had Harriman been merely another financier turned public servant. But of course he was far more than that. Neither a career official in the conventional sense nor an intellectual, Harriman is basically a latter-day Elizabethan—a self-avowed "adventurer" in government with the instincts and reactions of a canny hunter and sportsman rather than a bureaucrat. Hence his fascination for everyone who has ever been privileged to work with him. One does not read Harriman (or his amanuensis,