MANAGUA LIBRE
Sklar, Holly
Another Country THE WAR YEARS 1939-1945: A Nonconformist History of Our Times by I.F. Stone Little, Brown. 351 pp. $18.95. I.F. Stone hit his stride, many fans will tell you, in the mid- and...
...In one sense, indeed, these pieces are superior, for The Nation gave Stone more space than he ever allowed himself in the Weekly for the sheer pleasure of writing, so that we get passages like this one (from a 1941 report on hearings on the Lend-Lease Act): "The House Foreign Affairs Committee is no repository of genius, but after watching it for a few days, one gets to like its members...
...They are as American as apple pie...
...But this collection of Stone's World War II pieces for The Nation demonstrates that even then, long before he launched his famous Weekly, Stone was applying his keen powers of investigation and observation to the Government's policies and practices...
...Stone hit his stride, many fans will tell you, in the mid- and late-1960s, when his penetrating journalism began to pierce the curtain of secrecy and deception surrounding the U.S...
...The absence of brilliance makes them seem all the more representative of the decent democratic average____The questions they ask tend to fumble, but so do the questions most people ask about the bill, and in most cases they deserved better answers than they got...
...Other, older admirers recall his lonely stance as skeptic of the official line on the "police action" in Korea...
...You couldn't ask for a more helpful guide...
...intervention in Vietnam...
...Stone's coverage of wartime Washington almost a half century ago seems, today, like a visit to another country and, alas, in many ways a better one...
Vol. 53 • January 1989 • No. 1
