A TIME OF CHANGE A Reporter’s Tale of Our Time <i> by Harrison E. Salisbury (A Cornelia and Michael Bessie Boo</i> k / <i> Harper & Row: $10.95) </i>

Harrison Salisbury begins this memoir with his return from Hanoi in January, 1967, after having dispatched reports to the New York Times of the American bombing of Vietnam in late December--the so-called Christmas bombing. “What hung over Hanoi now was a threat worse than any L.B.J. could devise--the threat that the flow of rice . . . from China would be cut off,” Salisbury writes. “No rice meant starvation. Did L.B.J. know that? Of course not. Would he believe it? Probably not.”

After years as foreign correspondent, Salisbury shifts from Moscow to New York City and the nation. “A Time of Change” covers Eisenhower, Stevenson, the Kennedys, civil rights and Vietnam.

Always a committed, relentless reporter since 1927, Salisbury writes: “The First Amendment is our richest jewel.”