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An Amalgam Maker in a New Field
 

LUTHER H. EVANS
 

T
 

^O BE ASKED to write about one's job can be flattering
(jr disconcerting, depending on the circumstances. I must
confess to both kinds of emotional experience in the pres¬
ent case.

I am flattered that what 1 am doing should be of interest to
others, and I am somewhat disconcerted by what I see when I
look at my job and its context more closely.

The flattery really began when President Kirk asked me two
years ago, plus a few months, to come and spend what he must
have regarded as the tapering-ofi' )'ears of my career, in the intel¬
lectual climate of iMorningside. 1 had already reached the age
when one knows to the day how much time is left before retire¬
ment (and even perhaps begins to wonder how much time before
decrepitude) and has begun to trv to decide which of those
books he is going to write, which of his important mistakes he
is going to try to explain, and which of the current hurts of
mankind he is going to trv to assuage.

Thus it was that he caught me in a mood of self-examination
and even of moderate honesty about my future. Kennedy had
forgotten that luncheon 1 had given him in 1947, and although
Johnson had indicated  (in a receiving line at a Texas Society
 

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