title: Clark Clifford: The Wise Man of Washington
author:  John Acacia 
description: Although not a household name, Clark Clifford (19061998) advised Democratic presidents from Truman to Johnson. Acacia, American history professor at William Paterson University, has absorbed a mass of material and delivers an insightful if not always flattering biography. Fiercely ambitious, Clifford was a successful St. Louis lawyer when fellow Missourian Harry Truman became president in 1945. A senior colleague invited Clifford to Washington, where within a year his organizational skills won him promotion to Truman's special counsel. Happy to take credit for Truman's spectacular 1948 election upset, Clifford kept his reputation as a political genius for the next 20 years, although his opposition to sending troops to Vietnam put him in LBJ's doghouse until 1968, whenthanks to the possibility of peace talks and his own deft maneuveringhe replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of defense. This astute political biography concentrates on Washington infighting, position papers, memos, debates and quarrels on subjects ranging from trivial to world-shaking. Clifford comes across as a clear-eyed political strategist with genuinely noble ideals, but who looked after his own interests, often claiming others' ideas as his own and parlay[ing] his government service into a lucrative private legal career. <i>(Oct.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  **A  
  BRUSH  
  WITH  
  DEATH**
  
  
  **ALI CARTER**
  
  
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  _For Sam_
  
  
  _I’m sorry for breaking our pact_.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  It occasionally crossed Alexander, Earl of Greengrass’s mind that his past
  would come back to haunt him. A perfectly human thought, but one which came in
  the night and was always dispelled by the first ray of light through the gap
  in his bedroom curtains. He congratulated himself these days on conquering his
  demons and never letting his convivial character be dragged down by the silly
  mistakes any attractive young aristocrat might make.
  
  
  The radio hummed as the alarm set it off; Radio 3 gently stirring this
  seventy-five-year-old man from a particularly sound night’s sleep. He
  stretched out an arm to turn the violin strings down; his ears weren’t ready
  for a deaf man’s volume quite yet, and long gone were the days wh