Books: Could Things Be Worse?

AN EYE FOR THE DRAGON: SOUTHEAST ASIA OBSERVED: 1954-1970 by Dennis Bloodworth. 414 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $8.95.

AT WAR WITH ASIA by Noam Chomsky. 313 pages. Pantheon. $7.95.

The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin once divided thinkers into Hedgehogs and Foxes. The Fox roams freely, a random chaser of unknown intellectual scents, a case of pure curiosity organized only by the zigzag of the hunt. The Hedgehog bounds his territory, reduces it to a unity. He starts with his own terms and squeezes the universe inside them.

Dennis Bloodworth (The Chinese Looking Glass) is...

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