So many Charlie Wilson stories. So little time.

Here is Wilson, the House of Representatives' premier commie fighter and resident bon vivant, standing outside a posh Houston hotel late this spring after attending a $5,000-a-head Democratic Party fund-raiser with Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and a half dozen of his Texas Democratic colleagues.

Wilson, as tall, thin and ramrod-straight as the loblolly pines that blanket his East Texas district ("the only man I've ever met who can strut sitting down," a former House colleague once said of him), reaches past his ever-present suspenders into his Lewis & Thomas Saltz suit jacket and extricates a handful of snapshots. The photos are of a ...