A CAMELOT WHERE SARGE WAS KING

Memoirs about fathers tend to be Shakespearean affairs, and rarely do they dwell on why Dad is so joyful. Over his 95 years, Sargent Shriver founded the Peace Corps and Head Start and with Eunice raised five children (Maria being the only daughter) and inspired millions more through the Special Olympics. Mark K. Shriver, their second-to-youngest son, who runs the U.S. arm of Save the Children, pays tribute in A Good Man (Henry Holt), and no anecdote is more telling than when Mark's older brother Bobby collided with a Kennedy cousin during a Hyannis Port football game in the mid-1960s. R.F.K. admonished his tearful nephew that "Kennedys don't cry!" Sarge lifted up his son and said, "It's okay, you can cry! You're a Shriver!"

JIM KELLY