Harold Stassen (1907--2001) garnered accolades because the thirty-one-year-old "boy ask yourself" governor of Minnesota and speedy assumed a countrywide position as aide to Admiral William Halsey Jr. in the course of global struggle II. while Dwight D. Eisenhower used to be elected in 1952, Stassen was once named director of the Mutual defense management after which turned the president's specific assistant for disarmament. during this place, Stassen had the facility to profoundly form the country's overseas coverage and have become influential in early chilly conflict coverage discussions in regards to the limits and makes use of of traditional and nuclear guns.

In this nuanced biography, Lawrence S. Kaplan demonstrates that Stassen's function in Eisenhower's White condominium merits extra research than it has acquired from students. Stassen got here to Washington advocating the whole removing of nuclear guns, yet he quick got here to acknowledge that this is able to no longer occur. He refocused his efforts, operating for better overseas transparency and verbal exchange. The liberal internationalism that Stassen espoused turned embedded in chilly warfare coverage for many years, and he always supplied a voice for peace in an more and more hawkish nationwide safety institution.

Stassen, in lots of methods, used to be his personal worst enemy; his ambition and ego undermined his efforts and clouded his imaginative and prescient. His feuds with Secretary of nation John Foster Dulles have been mythical, and whereas Dulles usually prevailed within the assembly room, Stassen's imaginative and prescient of nuclear restraint used to be one who Eisenhower shared. Kaplan's learn presents a brand new standpoint on nuclear disarmament in the course of a serious interval in US historical past and sheds gentle on Eisenhower's method of foreign relations.