Includes bibliographical references (p. [394]-397) and index.

In this book - at once a biography, the intimate portrait of an extraordinary family, and a peculiarly American tragedy - Patricia Bosworth has re-created an entire era: Roosevelt's New Deal, the triumphant Left, the victory of World War II, and then the fall of liberalism and the dawn of the Cold War. Political turmoil followed; anti-Communist hysteria ruined many lives full of promise. Among them was that of Patricia Bosworth's father, Bartley Cavanaugh Crum, a heroic California lawyer of the thirties and forties, a Truman adviser, and a crusader against the Hollywood blacklist until he himself became its victim. Handsome, gifted with dazzling energy and spirit, he charmed everyone around him, until his own demons finally overwhelmed him, a real-life Gatsby. Crum's remarkable career took him from defending Harry Bridges, the controversial head of San Francisco's longshoremen's union, to representing movie star Rita Hayworth in her million-dollar divorce from Prince Aly Khan. His friends, clients, and acquaintances included Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie (whose close adviser Crum was), Paul Robeson, Henry Luce, John Garfield, Lillian Hellman, Orson Welles, J. Edgar Hoover, James Hoffa, William Randolph Hearst, Herb Caen, Earl Warren, and John F. Kennedy, among others, all of whom play a part in this book as they did in his life. The high point came with his stint as a diplomat, deeply involved in the creation of Israel. A low point followed soon after when he became briefly the publisher of the left-wing New York tabloid PM and tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a liberal newspaper at the height of the Red Scare. At the heart of this narrative is the searing emotional journey Patricia Bosworth made after her father's death. Questions kept haunting her: What went wrong? Why did this magnetic, celebrated, gallant man destroy himself and hurt those who loved him most in sometimes fatal ways? And who was he really deep down, this enigmatic Irish Catholic boy from Sacramento whose forebears had been gold miners and ranchers?