A poignant memoir of a full life and an impending death, written by one of America's foremost journalists during his battle with terminal cancer.   For three decades, from the end of World War II well into the Watergate era, internationally renowned newspaper and magazine columnist Stewart Alsop was a fixture on the Washington, DC, political landscape. In 1971, the respected journalist was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, marking the beginning of his courageous three-year battle with the terrible cancer that ravaged his body but could not damage his spirit or slow his facile and brilliantly incisive mind.   A passionate social critic and peerless political analyst who hobnobbed with presidents from FDR to Nixon, and enjoyed the respectful fellowship of such notable figures as Winston Churchill, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and Henry Kissinger, Alsop insightfully chronicles the course of his medical history without a trace of maudlin self-pity while celebrating his family, friends, colleagues, and an extraordinary life well lived.   Stay of Execution is Stewart Alsop's moving, powerful, and inspiring memoir of his terminal illness and his life before--an unforgettable true story of courage and accomplishment, trials and tragedy from one of the most revered American journalists of the twentieth century.