habu, thanks for the well-wishes and the same back to you. Re meeting those titans, it doesn’t surprise me at all –a family with a dad in all those a-borning postwar information crossroads would –and a dad with a son interested in the project would introduce him every chance. Herman Wouk’s great two volume fiction ‘The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” follow just such a family –the patriarch, Commander (later Admiral) Pug Henry (how do i recall that 20 years after reading the book –yay me!) is a Naval Person with adult kids, some Mil and some not –with their families & or intendeds –scattered across the world’s great cities in a variety of professions — when the WWII balloon goes up.

Wouk follows them as they try to return to the center (the pre-war life of mind) through their brushes with great individuals and events of that conflict. i know, sounds in this thumbnail kinda familiar as a device –& too great a conceit to wrap around the topic –but a great writer can pull it off and here did. Wouk is mainly writing history from the other end of the microscope, from the extremely tight focus of someone caught in a giant web of place and duty and ambition and loyalty and fear –and who has no idea what is coming round the corner. Result, a serious new perspective for the reader.

Oops –off track –my point was how the paths crossed in the academic-military-education-diplomacy world, and how the combat commanders were pulled back in to the center to lecture the high & the mighty on what was happening out on the ring of fire. –pick up the first volume and read half an hour, and betcha you’ll plow nonstop straight thru Vol II.