Books: War of Words

A DANGEROUS PLACE

by Daniel Patrick Moynihan with Suzanne Weaver

Atlantic-Little, Brown 297 pages; $12.50

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the most controversial and explosive U.S. ambassador ever appointed to the U.N. During eight stormy months in the post in 1975-76, he bruised so many feelings that a scandalized delegate said his colleagues were in "positive dread of his manners, his language and his abuse." The delegates will not be any happier with the ex-ambassador's account of his U.N. days. His scathing description of the organization: "Envision the British Home Office of 1900 enlarged five hundredfold, teeming with the incompetent appointees of decadent peers...