Eighth grade was not particularly memorable except for one historical moment -- the day I waved to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

On Sept. 24, 1959, my classmates and I stood shoulder to shoulder on the berm of the Parkway West to watch the boss of the Communist world roll by, ending his whirlwind tour of the Steel City. We didn't see much of him, mostly the battered hat he waved as the motorcade headed to the airport.

Ex-People magazine writer Peter Carlson seized the opportunity of the 50th anniversary of Khrushchev's U.S. visit to slap together a People magazine-like account of that trip with the endless subtitle "A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist."

		"K BLOWS TOP" By Peter Carlson Public Affairs ($26.95)

Pittsburgh was the last stop in the heartland for the short paunchy guy with bumps on his face. He spent a night with his wife, son and entourage at the Carl­ton House Hotel on Grant Street, long since torn down.

While Nina Khrushchev made the obligatory stop on Mount Washington, her husband joked with workers at the Mesta Machine Plant in Homestead, also long gone, and delivered a rambling 54-minute talk at the University of Pittsburgh.

He was joined and chided by Gov. David Lawrence and Pitt Chancellor Edward Litchfield, an interesting exchange Carlson skips in his cursory treatment of the brief stop here. The author also managed to quote the wrong source for the famed "hell with the lid lifted" observation of the former Smoky City.

It was biographer James Parton, not Charles Dickens.

Carlson focuses on Khrushchev's contentious visit to Los Angeles and Hollywood, where he gaped at Marilyn Monroe's cleavage, watched the filming of "Can-Can" starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine, and sulked when his visit to Disneyland was canceled for security reasons.

The Russian party then moved on to Iowa for a farm tour before heading east for Pittsburgh, then a weekend of talks with President Eisenhower.

Carlson interviewed just eight people for the book, including Sergei, Khrushchev's son who accompanied him on the '59 trip. Most of his information came from newspaper clippings and memoirs, he says.

While "K Blows Top" certainly qualifies for that catch-all adjective "breezy" and supplies a few chuckles, it lacks the heft of its subject.

I believe I came closer to Nikita Khrushchev on that hot September day than Peter Carlson managed to do.