Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto) is seen with a book in hand when she greets Bond in villain Sanchez amazing mansion. The film is “Licence to Kill” and Bond has been captured by Sanchez’s men after the raided the Hong Kong agents house where Bond was held.
There is a lobby card motif of Lupe actually sitting on the sofa reading. The cover is partly visible. So I guess you’d like to know what she is reading?
It is “The Price of Power – Kissinger in the Nixon White House” by Seymour M Hersch.
The book was released in 1983 and won Hersch The National Book Critics Circle Award that year. The book is a highly regarded journalistic accomplishment, undressing the faults and cynical decisions of the Nixon administration and the Nixon/Kissinger relationship. To many a bombshell that caused quite a stir when it came out although to others just a verification of the corrupt and deceiving White House politics at that time.
Stanley Hoffman wrote this about the book in the New York Times in July, 1983:
“SEYMOUR M. HERSH’S book could be called the Kissinger antimemoirs. ”The Price of Power” is a colossal effort to show that the image of mastery and public service conveyed by Henry Kissinger’s own volumes is just one more skillful deception and that the unseemly aspects of policy making or the occasional miscalculations and mistakes acknowledged by the former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State actually constitute the essence of the Nixon-Kissinger era.“
Seymour M Hersh (b. 1937) broke the 1969 story of the Muy Lai Massacre carried out by US soldiers in Vietnam which won him the Pulitzer Pirice. Later he worked as a political reporter at the New York Times, where he, and has since 1983 written a number of acclaimed books covering themes like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, JFK and the Killing of Osama bin Laden.
To some it might seem to be out of character for a stereotypical Bond girl to read a book on political history but it fits Lupe Lamora perfectly. She comes across emotional, falling in love with Bond but she is clever, acting strategically and rather allies with Bond to get rid of Sanchez. She too wants revenge and foremost freedom. And her political interest is suitable for her as the first lady of Isthmus having turned her affection for El Presidente played by Pedro Armendariz Jr.
007 Under the Mango Tree 
Posted on July 16, 2015
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