Personally acquainted and sympathetic with his subject, the author of The Selling of the President, among other works, brings to startling life the childhood, brief triumph, and long downward slide of Ted Kennedy--a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers.

The junior senator from Illinois discusses how to transform U.S. politics, calling for a return to America's original ideals and revealing how they can address such issues as globalization and the function of religion in public life.

"In January 1954, Joseph McCarthy was one of the most powerful members of the United States Senate. By the end of that year he had been censured by his colleagues, and his power was shattered. Ike and McCarthy is the dramatic story of how President Dwight Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to make this happen. When Eisenhower took office in January 1953, anticommunist fervor was at a fever pitch. The loudest voice was McCarthy's, charging that the...