Books: Blazing Pencils

THE FIRST CASUALTY. From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker by PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY

465 pages. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $12.95.

It is hard to believe that before Phillip Knightley took time out from his journalistic duties for London's Sunday Times to write his history of war correspondents, the subject had lain underfoot like an undiscovered gold mine. The events are momentous. As for the correspondents, they are an irresistible assortment of idealists, artists, cads, hustlers, violence junkies and necrophiles.

Knightley's lightly armed narrative charges from the Crimean War, where...

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