While just a young boy growing up in Texas, still playing cowboys and Indians in what was once Comanche country, William R. Polk listened excitedly to stories from his aging grandmother "Molly" Harding Polk. Molly was a child, and later bride, of the American Civil War, and had grown up listening to stories from her grandfather, born during the Revolutionary War. "So, in just two memories," William R. relates, "I had laid out for me tales of the entire history of the United States." This upbringing gave Polk a start in understanding both his country's history and that of his family--which, as it turns out, lays claim to more than a few noteworthy Americans. Later a teacher at Harvard and history professor at the University of Chicago (not to mention a state department vet under both Johnson and Kennedy, making William R. a formidable American in his own right), Polk turned his professional scrutiny to studying this remarkable lineage, which includes comrades-in-arms of George Washington, more than a few plucky frontiersmen (one who was accused of shooting the sheriff of Laredo--in self-defense, of course), a four-star general who was a brilliant WWII tank commander under Patton, a feisty lawyer who defended Martin Luther King, and America's tireless 11th president, James Knox Polk. Using these lives and the intimate stories surrounding them, Polk traces the story of our country in a meaningful, personal, and coherent way, "hang[ing] my tale of American history on a sort of 'backbone,' composed of my family." --Paul Hughes