When Advise & Consent came out, the author’s views were just ambivalent enough to allow Hollywood to produce a blockbuster. But Drury, unbeknownst to the Hollywood and academic sets, was a staunch Conservative. Leffingwell was Hiss, not some starry-eyed liberal who was smitten with Communismm is his youth; Brig Anderson, not Ackerman, was Joe McCarthy. The president was Eisenhower, not LBJ. Seab was Nunn or Scoop Jackson; the majority leader, Munson, was a composite of what we’d consider the GOP-e; and Orrin Knox was Everet Dirksen. This doesn’t become clear (crystal clear!) until you’ve read the follow-on books, the best of which was Capable of Honor, stressing the culpability of a runaway, liberal media. It was an incredibly accurate portrayal of media bias, well in advance of the proof provided by Cronkite, focusing on Walter Wonderful, the composite of Walter Lippman & Edward R. Murrow. Well worth the long read, much better than A&C—but of course untouched by Hollywood because Drury’s true colors were no longer pale pastels.