["Heroes"] is an interesting book which gets better as it goes along and gradually absorbs one once again into a familiar, very current form; the author's search for himself in the guise of fulfilling a much more merchantable assignment. In this case, Joe McGinniss was sent out with a lucrative contract to look for "the vanishing American hero." Even to begin with, for many reasons which he enumerates, he was pessimistic about finding such a beastie. Apparently he thinks there will never be any heroes again…. But the lucrative part was important to him because his first book, "The Selling of the President, 1968," had made him at 26 the youngest author ever to stand number one one the nonfiction bestseller list—"not counting Anne Frank." However, it had gradually dawned on him over the next few years not only that he would never be a great writer but that...