Center

This vivid portrait of Washington is a distillation of Stewart Alsop's twenty years in the American capital as a leading political journalist. It is a revealing picture of the focal point of political power in America and of the people who exercise that power. Stewart Alsop's knowledgeable survey ranges over the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, the press; its huge cast includes Dean Acheson and Joe McCarthy; Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk; John Foster Dulles and Earl Warren; John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Here too are powerful men with less familiar names, such as Tom Karamessines, the Deputy Director, Plans, of the CIA, Washington's equivalent of the head of the British Secret Service.

Stewart Alsop has, however, produced something more than a portrait of Washington at a particular moment in time. He looks back over post-war politicians and events - from Korea and McCarthyism to the U2 and the Bay of Pigs and shows how they have moulded the methods by which the United States is governed. Based on an unrivalled depth of experience, his book is a thorough account of a complex and fascinating city.