Travels with Doctor Death

What was the true nature of the relationship between British king of moles Kim Philby and chief U.S. mole-hunter James Angleton? Who ordered the Watergate break-in and who was Deep Throat? Was Hitler's paternal grandfather Jewish? What really goes on in the sepulcher of Yale's secret society Skull and Bones: Did a young Henry Luce lie naked in a coffin and blurt the secrets of his sex life to 14 peers? Did George Bush wrestle naked in the mud as part of his inititation? Was JFK's assassination a mob-hit conspiracy or a KGB plot, and what was Angleton's role in searching for the diary of JFK mistress Mary Meyer in the wake of her murder? Eyeballing nuclear annihilation, a forensic psychiatrist who is a courtroom witness for hire and twin gynecologists who loved and hated each other, Rosenbaum ( Manhattan Passions ) lures the reader as he plunges with brio into the murky waters of popular American obsession. In pieces that first appeared in the New Republic , the New York Times Magazine , Esquire and Vanity Fair , Rosenbaum's inquisitive spirit sometimes is stifled by the confines of journalistic space and glossiness; his talents might better be displayed in a full-length book on any one of these topics. (Jan.)