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Although besieged by public anger over a volatile economy and failed foreign wars, a rise in terrorism, and impeachment proceedings in Congress, President Richard Nixon visited the U.S. Naval Academy in June 1974 and extolled détente with the Soviet Union. He defended his policies of cooperation with an aggressive Russian adversary. The president wanted listeners to see détente as sophisticated, enlightened, and dependent on the man in charge. He emphasized his personal leadership: “A blend of the ideal and the pragmatic in our foreign policy has been especially critical in our approach to the Soviet Union. The differences between our two...

Suri talks about the rise and fall of an international counterculture. Here, he makes the claim that \"the sixties\" were fundamentally cultural in nature. While he notes the importance of street protests and dissident movements, whose grievances and goals were largely political, he asserts that their challenge was more cultural than political in nature. Those involved were contesting not only their leaders' ideologies and policies but, more fundamentally, their values. This was consonant with what he sees as a feature of the period: the profound and widespread discontent and disillusionment, in both the West and the East, stemming from Cold War ideologies and policies that promised more than they could deliver. Not only did these raise expectations for a better life, but governments also sponsored and created educational and cultural opportunities that allowed millions of mostly young people to perceive and appreciate the gap between these idealistic expectations and reality. The result, in essence, was the counterculture.

Suri examines how immigrant nationalism and an escape from anti-Semitism colored the perspective of Henry Kissinger. For Kissinger and many other Jewish immigrants, American represented a kind of salvation, as the embodiment of humankind's idealistic hopes.