For fifteen tense and troubled years between the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, the United States struggled to direct its domestic life and its role in a rapidly changing world.

These fifteen years are as rich as any in American history, rich in incident - the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights struggle, the antiwar crusade, the opening of China, Watergate, Kennedy's assassination, Johnson's retirement, the fall of Nixon: rich in personality - Robert Kennedy, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Jr, Earl Warren, Bob Dylan, Henry Kissinger, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey: and rich, finally in what it tells us of power, its attainment, and its use at home and abroad.