A memoir from the Greatest Generation - humor and history combine in this journey of a Jewish boy from Escanaba, Michigan to the heights of power - from the Great Books program at the University of Chicago to New Deal Washington, World War II Great Britain, the Truman White House, Paris, and Germany days after the war has ended.

Those interested in the humorous side of history will enjoy these 100 short anecdotes about Washington during the creative heyday of the New Deal, London during World War II as told from the point of view of a young Agricultural aide in the U.S. Embassy tasked with implementing the Lend-Lease program, and then the Marshall Plan.

The author provides firsthand accounts of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Robert Hutchins, Thornton Wilder, Gertrude Stein at the University of Chicago, Vice President Henry Wallace, Averell Harriman, and a colorful array of historical figures. He escapes assassins in Lisbon on the flying boat taking him and William Randall Hearst, jr. to England as the U.S. enters the war. A V-1 buzz bomb nearly annihilates the U.S. Embassy in London, and Winston Churchill refuses his plan to divert grain from beef and beer.