With THE PROMISE OF JOY: THE

PRESmENCY OF ORRlN KNOX, Allen

Drury brings to a close the political

saga that began with his Pulitzer

Prize-winning Advise and Consent

--a major literary work that has

carried some fifty major characters

and hundreds of minor ones through

almost 3,000 pages of dramatic

events vitally concerned with the

life-and-death issues of our troubled

times.

From Advise and Consent

through A Shade of Difference, Ca-

pable of Honor, Preserve and ero-

tect, and Come Nineveh, Come

Tyre, he has developed two funda-

mental themes: the survival of

democracy, particularly American

democracy, in a world increasingly

threatened by totalitarian conquest

and totalitarian thinking- and the

survival of individual freedom and

integrity in a political milieu in-

creasingly dominated by the grow-

ing intolerance of powerful men

toward those who disagree with

them.

Now in THE PROMISE OF JOY he

poses the question: Is there a prom-

ise of joy, for nations or for individ-

uals? And ff so, how can it be

achieved in a world that appears to

be hell-bent for self-destruction?