Fallaci enacts each of her assignments [as interviewer] as though it were a boxing match or a love scene. She springs into many different postures in rapid succession to unnerve her opponent, and alternates verbal scratches with relenting pats until her subject releases what she takes to be the essence of himself.

Whether or not these disingenuous tactics are necessary to overcome the self-protectiveness of public figures, they certainly testify to her belief that nothing could be duller than objective fact, and that the pursuit of truth must be peppered with friction. She specializes in the production of a spurious electricity, not so much to switch a clear light on political leaders, as to disclose in them a weakness here, a downright meanness there—those small shocks and sparks that journalism assumes are the surest devices for wakening its somnolent audience.

Fallaci brings the same rousing mixture of...