The point of the title is clear: Newspaper columns are ephemera, yet at their best repay rereading long after they appear. That is eminently the case with these collected columns by James B. ("Scotty") Reston. The fly-leaf begins by calling him the most influential columnist of the most influential newspaper in America, and that was not overstating the case. To a degree hard to imagine today, when anyone with an internet connection can share his or her views in the hopes someone will read them (sort of what I'm doing now), newspapers were commonly called then the Fourth Estate, a recognition of their necessary role in a thriving democracy. And the conscience of the newspaper was its columnists. And like Bond, nobody did it better than Reston.
The columns contained in this 480-page volume are sensibly arranged in thirteen thematic chapters. Those who might conclude based on Reston's land of birth and his Calvinist upbringing that the best adjective to describe him might be "dour" are advised to start with Chapter 8, Spoofs, although the chapter with the widest interest might be the final one, a collection of columns about JFK.
Reston would have never claimed that his judgments were always correct, but he knew how to think and write clearly.
I found my copy on the $2 remainder table of a D.C. bookstore in the summer of 1975. Money well-spent. ( )