Traces the crisis period leading up to America's entry into World War II, describing the nation's polarized interventionist and isolationist factions as represented by the government, in the press, and on the streets.

In this long awaited successor to his #1 national bestseller The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam describes in fascinating human detail how the shadow of Cold War Vietnam still hangs over American foreign policy, and how domestic politics have determined our role as a world power. Halberstam brilliantly evokes the internecine conflicts, the untrammeled egos, and the struggles for dominance among the key figures in the White House, the State...