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...none can be ready this year. Last week came a hint that German measles may be one of the first virus diseases to yield, at least partially, to drug treatment. University of Michigan researchers told the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology that amantadine, a drug synthesized by Du Pont chemists, works against German measles virus in the test tube. And it is safe enough to have been used with promising results on influenza patients. Such a drug may help children, but proving its safety for pregnant women will take years...
...This multiple biography by William Carr, longtime New York Post reporter, conscientiously chronicles all this progress: the Powder Trust, the antitrust suits, the intra-clan squabbles over control of the business, the rise and fall of family leaders. It also flickers upon Du Pont oddballs, heroes and politicians...
Commander Samuel Francis du Pont helped set up the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845, and during the Civil War led the task force that took Port Royal, S.C., for the North. Artillery Major Henry Algernon du Pont got the Congressional Medal of Honor for distinguished gallantry in the Shenandoah Valley. Henry du Pont (1812-89) had a thing about fences; folks used to say that he would put up a $4,000 enclosure to fence in a $2,000 pasture. And then there was "Uncle Fred" (Alfred Victor du Pont II), who in 1893 was shot to death...
Pensions & Pesticides. Another curious Du Pont was Alfred I, who was too busy running the company (in the early 1920s) to visit his children after he divorced his wife. After 14 years he was surprised to learn that his daughter had sat across the aisle from him on a train some years before; he had not recognized her. In the days before social security, Alfred pioneered in the field of old-age pensions, spent $350,000 of his own money in pension checks for Delaware's needy. His cousin and archenemy Pierre shelled...
Author Carr plainly started with the notion that any clan with a history and a fortune like the Du Ponts deserves a biography. He is not the first to attempt it (three more or less forgettable Du Pont chronicles have been turned out in the last 30 years), but he is the first to get full family cooperation. While Carr produces nothing that is startlingly perceptive or especially exciting, he does deserve credit for pursuing the rocky, incredible history of the dynasty with scrupulous objectivity. The Du Ponts are all there: warts, splendor...