“Straws in the wind” may be a journalistic cliché, but the political novel is littered with them. Like Nina Nimmo’s hyper-suspicious acquaintances, they are another index of the complex behavior patterns of highly political groups. The ability to sense the meaning behind occurrences which often seem slight in themselves is another talent of the acute politician. When Jethro Bass, in _Coniston_, learns that the postmastership of the small town of Brampton is to go to another’s protégé, he realizes that this is the first skirmish in a coming battle for control of the state. His riposte is to take his candidate to Washington. An old soldier, he gains President Grant’s sympathies and the job. The invocation of a dusty city ordinance which pushes James L. Ford’s Hot Corn Ike and his iron kettle off the corner traditionally marks the invasion of Mike Grogan’s ward by reform elements. Willie Stark in _All the King’s Men_ rightly interprets the attempt to indict his state auditor as the first barrage in an attack against him by resurgent opponents. In _The Charterhouse of Parma_ the seemingly imminent execution of Fabrizio del Dongo makes Parma’s incumbent regime totter. The Archbishop is one of the very few acute enough to realize that “honour forbade the Conte to remain Prime Minister in a country where they were going to cut off the head, and without consulting him, of a young man who was under his protection.” =The Mechanics of Control= The mechanics by which power is attained and kept require mastery for successful execution and close observation for understanding. Proficiency in applying these techniques is as much the hallmark of the professional political class as are the basic attitudes of the upper, middle, and lower economic and social classes. If possible, an opponent is thrown off stride before the race begins. Jerome Garwood in _The 13th District_ feels that his renomination to Congress is assured. But he is hurriedly called home to find that control has been wrested from his chief supporter by an opponent who has called an early district committee meeting after taking the precaution of securing enough proxy votes to establish his supremacy. In _Number One_ Dos Passos had noted the importance of seating convention delegations nine years before the celebrated controversies at the Republican national convention of 1952. In this novel Chuck Crawford defeats a rival in seating his delegation to the Democratic convention partly through the offices of friends who have influence in the White House. Often the law is scrutinized for advantages lying buried within it. Hank Martin in _A Lion Is in the Streets_ is swept into office on a tide of votes cast under his “God-blessed Grandpappy Law.” Passed at the state’s 1898 disenfranchising convention, the statute set up educational or property qualifications for voters but made them inapplicable to descendants of men who had voted before 1868. Obtaining photostats of the list of