Books: The Man Who Would Be King

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Softening such hard lines for public consumption was a special challenge for Speechwriter Persico. There was also Rockefeller's dyslexia, a reading disability that turned printed words into visual spoonerisms. Extemporization and cliches eased the strain. "I wanna tell ya, this is some problem" is classic Rockefeller. "The brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God" became such a standard coda that one journalist coined the acronym BOMFOG.

Persico offers informal glimpses of the would-be great man on the Rockefeller preserve in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. Children romp between Brancusis, Arps and Calders. Nelson and Brother Laurance settle golf bets from bags of silver dollars that Brother David advised them to buy. We learn that the Governor was a meat-and-potatoes man with a hankering for Oreo cookies and Fig Newtons, and that he stirred his coffee with the temple pieces of his eyeglasses.

All humanizing, up to a point. Perhaps it is inevitable that a Rockefeller remain remote. Money buys distance in direct proportion. Mr. Nelson, as he was known at the family offices, had global visions, but the perspective was frequently from outer space. "Take an average family with an income of a hundred thousand dollars," was the way he once began a tax proposal. He had to ask an aide what a Manson Gang was, and he admitted to the author that in the 1930s he got rid of a pestering Orson Welles by giving him some money to make a movie. "Have you ever seen Citizen Kane?" asked Persico. "No," replied an uninterested Rockefeller. Presumably no one asked him why William Randolph Hearst never made it to the White House. —By R.Z. Sheppard