Instant History

LET US BEGIN, edited by Richard L Grossman (144 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $1.95), is part of a rash of books about the New Frontier. John Kennedy had been in the White House for a little more than two weeks when a task force of 14 writers and photographers was at work recording, in words and pictures, the first 100 days of his new Administration. The contributors include men and women of such established reputation as Princeton's History Professor Eric F. (Rendezvous with Destiny) Goldman and the London Economist's Barbara Ward, but their product is a weird paste-up. Many of the critical hours and major problems of the 100 days are glossed over or overlooked. Laos is dismissed with four pictures. The Cuban invasion (which occurred on the 87th day of the new Administration) is reduced to a frantic, one-page epilogue. The book is stuffed with boiler-plate material--photo essays on starving Congolese and primitive Ecuadorians that are technically brilliant but utterly irrelevant. And there are glaringly misleading statements, such as Barbara Ward's "Asia, apart from pockets of territory such as Goa, is free."

THE KENNEDY CIRCLE, edited by Lester Tanzer (315 pp.; Robert B. Luce, Inc.; $4.95); THE KENNEDY GOVERNMENT, by Stan Opotowsky (208 pp.; Dutton; $3.95), are two more quickie efforts on the same subject. Both are collections of sketches of the strong men in the Kennedy Government, and as with most sketchbooks, their quality varies. The Kennedy Circle is the most variable since it was gathered from the blacksheets of 14 top Washington correspondents. Its best feature is its occasional irreverence: New York Times's Elie Abel makes Defense Secretary Robert McNamara a character of almost comic naivete when he tells of his bewilderment at discovering that some admirals and generals do leak secrets to reporters. The Kennedy Government, a one-man effort by Stan Opotowsky, author (The Longs of Louisiana) and political writer for the New York Post, is fairly cohesive, but his partisanship gleams through occasionally, and there are indications of hasty reporting. The portraits in both books are sharp and journalistically clear, but the question remains why they were done; readers could achieve the same effect by pasting up newspaper or magazine stories.

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