History's shabby discards and their dejected heirs were cashing in on the fact and dialectic of disaster. Diaries, articles and book excerpts by Paul Reynaud, Maurice Gamelin, Benito Mussolini, Hermann Göring and Galeazzo Ciano had already appeared in hundreds of U.S. and foreign newspapers, and there were more to come.
Publishers, laying their billfolds on the altar of history, were hotly competing for every big-name rehash of yesterday's news.
Expertly appraising this booming market, France's smooth, slick ex-Premier and Finance Minister Reynaud announced that he was going to write his memoirs, refused to...