Description: Returning to the colorful cast of characters he created in Toward What Bright Glory?, Allen Drury revisits the brothers of a university fraternity house, Class of 1939, as they prepare for their reunion in the year 2001.

By the 1980s, former student body president Richard Emmett "Willie" Wilson has worked his way to the Senate and is contemplating a run for the presidency. Meanwhile his longtime nemesis Dr. Renny Suratt, a political science professor at their alma mater, has helped to groom Willie's anti-Vietnam activist son, a veteran of that war, for a seat in the House.

When Willie finally does run for executive office, he has to confront family conflicts, a hostile media, and an ever-changing political climate -- a climate his son seems to embrace naturally. Along the way, he is supported by old college friends, including incisive Washington reporter Tim Bates and affable college president Duke Offenberg. Only Renny, from his ivory tower, remains Willie's continual and formidable adversary.

Allen Drury made his considerable mark covering such Washington institutions as the Senate, the Pentagon, and the State Department. In Public Men, he examines the inner workings of a presidential campaign and skillfully conveys the meshing of public and private lives.

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