Chances of a Lifetime
 

Chances of a Lifetime

Warren Christopher is that rarest of Washington personalities: a wise and witty public servant once described by the "Washington Post" as "the antithesis of the glitz-hungry, self-aggrandizing, corner-cutting political figures who dominate Washington today." In this memoir, the man whose sage counsel and sometimes parodied discretion brought him to the right hand of mayors, governors, and presidents, shares his personal recollections and impressions of leaders and events that shaped the second half of the twentieth century.

Writing in tightly crafted, often self-effacing prose, Christopher chronicles how he left the privacy of life at a premier law firm to heed calls to public service from Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, and California governor Edmund "Pat" Brown -- as well as presidents Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Throughout his career, Christopher faced diverse challenges: he advised a president on whether to dispatch federal troops to quell civil disturbances; led negotiations to free American hostages in Iran; investigated a major city's police force gone awry; and helped cope with Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

From "Starting from Scranton" and "The Johnson Treatment" to "Middle East: Antipodes" and "Yesterday a War, Today a Country," each chapter is a compelling story on its own. Together, they offer the first clear picture of the impact of this quiet North Dakotan on modernAmerican history.

Christopher was involved in many important events during his career, from race riots in the 1960s (when he was a Department of Justice official) to the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and1980 (when he did his first stint at State). About this latter episode, he writes: "Never before nor since has any foreign policy problem engaged me so intensively for so long. One of the most interesting sections of Chances of a Lifetime describes the extraordinary security measures Christopher learned to live with when he became secretary of state. He couldn't visit a friend's house without it undergoing a sweep several hours beforehand. Dinner at a restaurant involved reserving an extra table for a pair of agents who would do nothing but drink iced tea and watch for trouble. For a morning jog in Israel, "agents arranged for me to run at sunrise inside a deserted soccer stadium." Christopher came under intense scrutiny, too. He relates, for instance, the minor flap over choosing to edit a speech in which he referred to American Chinese relations as a "cooperation" rather than a "partnership."

Regrettably, the book does not include much discussion of Christopher's role in Democratic politics since leaving the Clinton administration; among other things, he led Al Gore's effort to challenge the Florida vote count in 2000. Yet Chances of a Lifetime is full of crisp and straightforward prose about an important public figure; it's required reading for foreign-policy aficionados, and anybody else interested in Washington's ladder of success. --John J. Miller