RECKLESS DISREGARD: CORPORATE GREED, GOVERNMENT INDIFFERENCE, AND THE KENTUCKY SCHOOL BUS CRASH

RECKLESS DISREGARD: CORPORATE GREED, GOVERNMENT INDIFFERENCE, AND THE KENTUCKY SCHOOL BUS CRASH James S. Kunen (Simon & Schuster, $23) ''I have no trouble understanding Larry Mahoney. It's God I can't understand,'' explained a grieving mother. In 1988 Mahoney drove into a church bus, killing 24 Kentucky children and three adults. If you're a parent, don't read Kunen's prologue and first chapters: a detailed, merciless documentary of children clawing to flee flames from the gas tank mounted precariously near the front door. Mahoney was drunk, but President Richard Nixon, Henry Ford II, and Lee Iacocca were sober when, according to White House tapes, they made Oval Office decisions that allegedly contributed to this tragedy. Kunen, attorney and author of The Strawberry Statement, persuasively contends that Ford Motor Company knowingly traded lives for profits. Ford disagrees-and still puts gas tanks by the front doors of some of its school buses. A -D.A. Ball