Ustinov Still at Large

``When presented with a weekly column to fill in a respected newspaper, the temptation is to deal in a personal manner with the latest insult to reason that has been served up piping hot in the world's headlines.'' It's a temptation Ustinov inveterately yields to, and the results, at their best, cut geopolitical crises down to a series of suave blackout sketches--Desert Storm, the vanishing of show more the USSR, the L.A. riots, the Maastricht treaty, American presidential elections, the Israeli expulsion of terrorists, the Bosnian war. But Ustinov, for all his worldly urbanity as ambassador-at-large for UNICEF, remains as determined a political outsider as Russell Baker, the American columnist he most resembles. And his political analyses--good-hearted liberal commonplaces seasoned with hindsight--aren't trenchantly enough reasoned, or pungently enough expressed, to compel lasting attention. show less