There are those who believe that Richard Condon is the most underestimated contemporary American novelist; there are others who are convinced that he is the most outrageous. Now, the author of Mile High and the Manchurian Candidate has exploded with a passionate, outrageously funny social satire on an obsessed America.

​

When Duncan Mulligan, blue-jawed Wall Street lawyer, whose only qualification for the White House is his sense of conviction he ought by rights to be there, is put up for President, no one realizes that his vastly wealthy widowed mother-in law’s sexual ambitions will threaten the course of American history.

 

Ada Harris merely wants to enjoy a passionate Indian Summer love affair with Osgood Noon, the altruistic tycoon – in this democratic age every bit as much a privilege of the rich and powerful as everyone else – but this scandal (it is computed by the hard-nosed political manipulators) could harm Dunc’s chances. 

​

The ensuing contest embattles both families: Tris, a political riot producer for Left, Right, far Left and ossified Right; Gawain, very much the gracious Monsignor for the Church of Christ, Computer; Jean-Pierre, vice merchant extraordinary for the Mafia; Mona and Fiona, the toothsome twins who work assiduously and devastatingly for The Cause; the incomparable hairy Esau; and last but absolutely not least, the intellectually prodigious young naturalist, Botolf, the idealist who connives to save his father’s constitutional right to make love.