A fixture in Washington society, Joseph Alsop knew intimately everyone who mattered in American politics, including all the presidents of his day, but was especially close to John and Jacqueline Kennedy.He also visited Churchill in London, de Gaulle in Paris, Adenauer in Bonn, and writes entertainingly about these and other larger-than-life figures.No journalist since Henry Adams so brilliantly described the habits of the great and near-great of his day, in government and elsewhere.