David Brinkley, one of America's most respected and celebrated news commentators, turns his journalistic skills to a personal account of the tumultuous days of World War II in the sleepy little Southern town that was Washington, D.C. Carrying us from the first days of the war through Roosevelt's death and the celebration of VJ Day, Brinkley surrounds us with fascinating people. Here are the charismatic President Roosevelt and the woman spy, code name "Cynthia." Here, too, are the diplomatic set, new Pentagon officials, and old-line society members--aka "Cave Dwellers." We meet the brashest and the brightest who actually ran the government, and the countless men and women who came to support the war effort in any way they could--all seeking to share in the adventure of their generation.

Memoirs of newscaster and television journalist David Brinkley tracing his rise to the top of the television broadcasting field.

"Douglas Brinkley and American Heritage have done a grand job. This is a first-rate book: fair, clear, and enormously welcome." - David McCullough "Douglas Brinkley's one-volume history is a riveting narrative of unique people who have come to call themselves American. There is no dust on these pages as the author brilliantly tells our national story with skill and brevity." In this rich and inspiring book, acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley takes us on the incredible journey of the United States - a nation formed from a vast countryside on whose fringes thirteen small British colonies fought for their freedom, then established a democratic nation that spanned the continent, and went on to become a world power. This book will be treasured by anyone interested in the story of America.

Douglas Brinkley presents the definitive, revealing biography of an American legend: renowned news anchor Walter Cronkite. An acclaimed author and historian, Brinkley has drawn upon recently disclosed letters, diaries, and other artifacts at the recently opened Cronkite Archive to bring detail and depth to this deeply personal portrait. He also interviewed nearly two hundred of Cronkite’s closest friends and colleagues, including Andy Rooney, Leslie Stahl, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Les Moonves, Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, Bob Schieffer, Ted Turner, Jimmy Buffett, and Morley Safer, using their voices to instill dignity and humanity in this study of one of America’s most beloved and trusted public figures.

Few American historians of his generation have had as much influence in both the academic and popular realms as Alan Brinkley. His debut work, the National Book Award–winning Voices of Protest, launched a storied career that considered the full spectrum of American political life. His books give serious and original treatments of populist dissent, the role of mass media, the struggles of liberalism and conservatism, and the powers and limits of the presidency. A longtime professor at Harvard University and Columbia University, Brinkley has shaped the field of U.S. history for generations of students through his textbooks and his mentorship of some of today’s foremost historians. Alan Brinkley: A Life in History brings together essays on his major works and ideas, as well as personal reminiscences from leading historians and thinkers beyond the academy whom Brinkley collaborated with, befriended, and influenced. Among the luminaries in this volume are the critic Frank Rich, the journalists Jonathan Alter and Nicholas Lemann, the biographer A. Scott Berg, and the historians Eric Foner and Lizabeth Cohen. Together, the seventeen essays that form this book chronicle the life and thought of a working historian, the development of historical scholarship in our time, and the role that history plays in our public life. At a moment when Americans are pondering the plight of their democracy, this volume offers a timely overview of a consummate student—and teacher—of the American political tradition.

From one of America’s most revered journalists–a richly entertaining roundup of the extraordinary individuals with whom he crossed paths in our nation’s capital and of the events that marked the twentieth century. Here are firsthand profiles of Washington insiders that only an insider himself could have given us: Franklin D. Roosevelt counting out enough cigarettes to get through a half-hour debriefing with the press; May Craig, the first female reporter to penetrate Roosevelt’s inner sanctum, who never failed to remind the president that his wife was a newspaper writer, too; Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and race baiter who effectively became mayor of Washington at a time when it was a segregated provincial town; Jimmy Hoffa, the popular and ill-fated union leader; Lyndon Johnson, whom Brinkley describes as the most impressive and appalling figure he encountered; and Ronald Reagan, whom he found to be the most mysterious of the eleven presidents he covered. Here is also Brinkley’s account of President Kennedy’s assassination and a poignant remembrance of D-day. David Brinkley was there and saw it all. In the “sour-lovable manner” (Mark Feeney, Boston Globe) of storytelling that he perfected, and in a narrative style that is both “hilarious and instructive” (George Will), Brinkley’s Beat gives us his vivid recollections and the intelligence, acuity, and clear-sightedness on which his unimpeachable reputation rested for more than half a century.

How did liberalism, the great political tradition that from the New Deal to the 1960s seemed to dominate American politics, fall from favor so far and so fast? In this history of liberalism since the 1930s, a distinguished historian offers an eloquent account of postwar liberalism, where it came from, where it has gone, and why. The book supplies a crucial chapter in the history of twentieth-century American politics as well as a valuable and clear perspective on the state of our nation's politics today. Liberalism and Its Discontents moves from a penetrating interpretation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal to an analysis of the profound and frequently corrosive economic, social, and cultural changes that have undermined the liberal tradition. The book moves beyond an examination of the internal weaknesses of liberalism and the broad social and economic forces it faced to consider the role of alternative political traditions in liberalism's downfall. What emerges is a picture of a dominant political tradition far less uniform and stable--and far more complex and contested--than has been argued. The author offers as well a masterly assessment of how some of the leading historians of the postwar era explained (or failed to explain) liberalism and other political ideologies in the last half-century. He also makes clear how historical interpretation was itself a reflection of liberal assumptions that began to collapse more quickly and completely than almost any scholar could have imagined a generation ago. As both political history and a critique of that history, Liberalism and Its Discontents, based on extraordinary essays written over the last decade, leads to a new understanding of the shaping of modern America.