THIS LETTER FROM AMERICA WILL OFFER A RANDOM account of American trends that at best are marginally political: of interest to readers of Government and Opposition because they take an interest in political culture in the broadest (most nominal) sense. In choosing material, I have employed criteria of selection that are consistently arbitrary but only occasionally indefensible. For example, this letter is tied together by the letter B— for Barber, who is writing it, and Bloom, Bork, Biden and Gorbachev (forced to choose, I prefer arbitrariness to consistency) who are its principal subjects. If this seems a rather too cavalier approach, bear in mind that deadlines on a quarterly publication will make much of what was timely and clever when written seem stale and irrelevant when read months later.