Start with the veracity of Joe Isuzu. Add the civic virtue of Al Capone, the greed of Ivan Boesky, the gentility of a China Seas pirate. Wed this paragon to a bimbo on the make with the vanity of a Marie Antoinette and a shopping lust that would turn a Beverly Hills divorcee envy-green. Multiply by ten and you have, approximately, the portraits of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos that Sterling Seagrave paints in this merciless account of the Filipino dictator's rise and fall.
In a now famous apercu, author Mary McCarthy charged that everything written by playwright-memoirist Lillian Hellman was a...