Bestseller Revisited

A NATION OF SHEEP (192 pp.)--William J. Lederer--Norton ($3.95).

Doom croakers, hand wringers and political hypochondriacs--plus some 100,000 plain, puzzled Americans--have made a 36-week bestseller out of this loosely written handful of horror stories about U.S. policy in the Pacific. Author Lederer has provided an able demonstration of how to succeed in the book business without really trying. Having hit pay dirt with The Ugly American, it was simply a matter of going back to the same place and digging some more dirt.

The Ugly American, which retired Navy Captain Lederer co-authored with Eugene Burdick, was a fictional morality tale about a good guy (ugly) working for his country amid a collection of bad guys (not ugly) whose laziness and incompetence, indifference and self-indulgence were rapidly turning an Asian nation over to the smart, dedicated Reds. Sheep, presented as fact, consists of five expose-style chapters (on Laos, Thailand, Formosa, Korea, and the foreign student program), four chapters on who is to blame (bumbling bureaucrats and ignorant journalists), and four chapters on what's to be done about it.

Lederer's cause is just, but his case is overstated and vastly oversimplified. Eastern knavery and Western gullibility are not the only reasons for U.S. difficulties in Asia. There is a growing number of ugly (and not so ugly) Americans working to good purpose, and the trail of U.S. foreign policy is not just a downhill slide. Lederer's solution--study foreign affairs, pester your Congressman--is also unexceptionable.

Unfortunately, Author Lederer is a heat generator rather than a light spreader. Any of the 130,000-odd purchasers of A Nation of Sheep who take Lederer's case at face value must feel inclined to dump the U.S. Government into the Pacific and start over. Such invitations to despair are just what engender the rancorous ("We are betrayed") hysteria of the Birchites and other seekers of simple solutions to complicated problems.

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