Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.

They document Reston volunteering to approach fellow Times columnist Anthony Lewis to ask him to moderate his anti-Kissinger texts and offering to plant a question in a press conference for the secretary. C. Reston's work was required reading for top government officials with whom he sometimes cultivated a professional symbiosis; he would be their sounding board and they would be his news sources.

He was associated for many years with The New York Times.