In these long interviews, conducted during the last five years of his life, a noted writer talks about his professional life as a poet, playwright, lawyer, editor of Fortune, Librarian of Congress and Harvard professor. Relatively reticent about his family, MacLeish (18921982) is outspoken about FDR, Truman ("totally himself all the time"), Joe McCarthy, George Marshall (a remarkable man of great intellectual powers) and Alger Hiss ("the most complete...