Hmm. Bank balance down. Time to do another Big Novel. But what about?… Got it! Berlin and the airlift. It has flyers and wild blue yonders, and conflict with the Russkies, and a small band of far-seeing Army officers, and fräuleins, and bad Germans and maybe a few good ones this time, and …

Leon Uris' new novel [Armageddon] is the predictable end product of an interior monologue just like that. And it must be conceded that Uris, who once publicly pronounced himself "the most outstanding U.S. writer of today," has succeeded astonishingly in his aim: into this big bad book he has packed away every conceivable stock figure, from the nice Russian officer (Igor) trapped by the system, to the beautiful whore (Hilde) who reforms and then softens the hard heart of the dashing American pilot (Scott, what else?).

Uris put in about three years of...