NONFICTION - Nov. 9, 1986

THE NEW ADDRESS BOOK: HOW TO REACH ANYONE WHO’S ANYONE by Michael Levine (Perigee: $7.95, paperback; 305 pp.). This is the revised and expanded edition of Levine’s 1980 “How to Reach Anyone Who’s Anyone,” which sold, its publisher tells us, 30,000 copies in two months. No phone numbers are included, only street addresses; and the addresses seem to be official rather than personal. Thus Streep, Meryl (Mary Louise) is c/o ICM, 40 W. 57th St., NY 10019.

It is, of course, the chutzpah of the subtitle that makes this a book one might flip through rather than shelve. In Levine’s estimation, Norman Lear (listed) is somebody, Lew Wasserman (unlisted) is nobody. Jose Napoleon Duarte is somebody, Daniel Ortega is nobody. The Rev. Jerry Falwell is somebody, Rev. Pat Robertson is nobody. Sidney Sheldon is somebody, James Michener is nobody. Mikhail Gorbachev is somebody, Deng Xiaopeng is nobody. Leonard Bernstein is somebody, Herbert von Karajan is nobody.

Clearly a book that omits Wasserman, Ortega, Robertson, Michener and Deng has failed to live up to its billing. Just as clearly, if it puts access to Lear, Duarte, Falwell, Sheldon, Gorbachev and Bernstein between two covers, it might come in handy in some quarters.

Postscript: The odd browser who may open a book like this looking for names like Ochs, Sulzberger, Graham, Rosenthal, Chandler, Johnson, Bradlee or Murdoch should be advised: For Levine, they are all nobody.--Jack Miles

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