Driven patriot - Townsend Hoopes

A haunting portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the mid-twentieth century, this biography takes a penetrating look at James Forrestal's life and work. Brilliant, ambitious, glamorous, yet a perpetual outsider, Forrestal forged a career that took him from his working-class origins to the social and financial stratosphere of Wall Street, and from there to policy making in Washington.

As secretary of the navy during World War II, he was the principal architect in transforming an obsolescent navy into the largest, most formidable naval force in history. After the war, as the nation's first secretary of defence, he played a major role in shaping the anti-Communist consensus that sustained the U.S. policy of containment during the Cold War. Despite his many achievements, Forrestal's life ended in tragedy with his suicide in 1949.

This absorbing study not only takes an understanding look at the many-sided man but presents an authoritative history of the great but troubled years of America's rise to world primacy.

Winner of the 1992 Roosevelt Naval History Prize, the book enjoyed wide acclaim when first published and is now considered a definitive work.

Townsend Walter Hoopes II (1922 - 2004) was an American historian, who reached the height of his career as Under Secretary of the Air Force from 1967 to 1969.
Dr. Douglas Brinkley is currently a Professor of History at Rice University and a Fellow at the James Baker III Institute of Public Policy. He completed his bachelor's degree at Ohio State University and received his doctorate in U.S. Diplomatic History from Georgetown University. Dr. Brinkley served as Professor of History and Director of the Roosevelt Centre at Tulane University in New Orleans. From 1994 until 2005 he was Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Centre for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. On the literary front, Dr. Brinkley has edited Jack Kerouac's diaries, Hunter S. Thompson's letters and Theodore Dreiser's travelogue. His work on civil rights includes Rosa Parks (2000) and the forthcoming Portable Civil Rights Reader. He won Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot (1993).