FOREWORDPETE I~OSE, the ball player, translates anything he can into baseballterms. Ask when he was born and he will tell you, "The year of Di-Maggio's streak," meaning 1941, when Joe DiMaggio hit safely infifty-six consecutive games. "How long have you been writing?" Pete asked me. "Well," I said, "I got my first regular job on a newspaper in 1927." "The year Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs," he said. Although I never won a plaque for arithmetic, my years as a news-paper stiff seem to count up to more than half a century, time enoughto get around and about and meet some interesting people. If I havehad the good fortune to know more than some do, that is not evidenceof my irresistible charm. It goes with the territory. My job has taken me around the world and put me in contact withthousands of individuals. They have varied widely as to size, shape,color, creed and previous condition of servitude but virtually all havehad one quality in common-they have been men and women of ac-tion. What they did commanded attention and when they died their deaths touched many. This book introduces some of them. Most of these were friends of mine; some were among my dearest friends. I hope I avoided mawkishness writing about them but if emotion sometimes tugged at the typewriter, I suppose it couldn't be helped. The reader will find many described by adjectives like "sweet" or "great." This may be unfortunately repetitious but it is also true. I have never subscribed to the de mortuis nil nisi bonum school. Dr. Sam Johnson, noting discrepancies between the character or behavior of the living man and the sentiments graven on his tombstone, observed that "in lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath." Nevertheless, I have