By the time the first volume of Henry Kissinger's memoirs, White House Years, appeared in October 1979, readers of TIME had already been given an extraordinary preview of its contents: three major excerpts from the book, selected and condensed by our editors in consultation with Kissinger. TIME'S readers once again have a first look at Kissinger's remarkable world in this week's cover story, the first of three installments from his forthcoming book, Years of Upheaval, to be published on March 25 by Little, Brown. This volume covers Kissinger's service as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State during Richard Nixon's second term. TIME'S excerpts will focus on the 1973 war in the Middle East, Watergate and Kissinger's dealings with the Soviets and Chinese.

As in 1979, the daunting task of editing Kissinger's insightful and often elegant prose went to Assistant Managing Editor Ronald Kriss. "For every Kissinger word we used, we had to discard 19," laments Kriss. "Kissinger's themes are so tightly interwoven that separating material by subject, as we chose to do, is particularly difficult." Completed excerpts were sent by courier to Kissinger, who would then telephone Kriss with comments and clarifications. "He is an excellent text editor," says Kriss. "He is also an absolute workhorse. With help from TIME'S switchboard, he was able to find me just about anywhere, at any hour, even in the shower at 8:30 a.m." Kissinger also called several times from Massachusetts General Hospital, where he went first for tests and then, two weeks ago, for a triple coronary bypass. Says Kriss: "The very night before his surgery, with attendants swarming around to prep him, he calmly went over a 15,000-word segment with me--and he didn't miss so much as a dropped comma." Indeed, from his hospital bed Kissinger is still putting the final touches on TIME'S next two installments.

At least for a while, Kriss had more hospitable surroundings for his work: the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, where he spent ten days working on the Kissinger manuscript.

Reporter-Researcher Eileen Chiu, who double-checked everything in TIME'S excerpts that could be independently verified, was also vacationing in St. Maarten, with her husband and 20-month-old daughter. "We all had dinner together and spent a lot of time talking about how we would handle the material," says Chiu. So, via the Netherlands Antilles, Boston and New York City, TIME can offer its readers a richly detailed account of a most controversial period of American history from one of its principal participants.

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