Every Man Should Try: The Adventures of a Public Interest Activist

In an unusual, event-packed memoir, Stone comes out from the shadows cast by his famous father, radical journalist I.F. Stone, by recounting his three decades of public interest campaigns on behalf of a variety of causes and issues. As head of the Federation of American Scientists since 1970, Stone (a mathematician by training) helped clinch the 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty banning antiballistic missiles; defended Andrei Sakharov through hunger strikes and arrests, speeding his 1986 release from exile in Gorky; brought Cambodian nationalist leader Hun Sen to Washington in 1992 to solidify political resistance to a return of the genocidal Khmer Rouge; and alerted the CIA to Peru's Shining Path, a Maoist terrorist insurgency, which led to the arrest of the group's leader by the Peruvian government. Stone measures these and other qualified ""successes"" against numerous failed campaigns, such as efforts to create a legislative check to the U.S. president's first use of nuclear weapons. A freewheeling, globe-trotting activist, Stone secured medical care for Khrushchev's daughter Lena, who was dying of lupus; confronted then-governor Ronald Reagan on his dependence on astrology; and in 1996 briefed Taiwan on a scheme for reunification with mainland China. Although the stodgy, methodical narrative often bogs down in detail, this instructive casebook will challenge activists and opinion-makers, while general readers will enjoy its insider's glimpses of the foreign policy establishment and the corridors of power. Stone's use of four iconic symbols throughout the text--butterfly, chain, open or closed door--to flag turning points or connections is, however, silly and distracting. Photos throughout. (Apr.)