Publisher, Random House Audiobooks (May 2006)

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From the National Book Award–winning author of An American Requiem and Constantine's Sword comes a sweeping yet intimate look at the Pentagon and its vast—often hidden—impact on America.

This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. James Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more. To argue his case, he marshals a trove of often chilling evidence.

Carroll draws on rich personal experience (his father was a top Pentagon official for more than twenty years) as well as exhaustive research and dozens of extensive interviews with Washington insiders. The result is a grand yet intimate work of history, unashamedly polemical and personal but unerringly factual. With a breadth and focus that no other audiobook could muster, it explains what America has become over the past sixty years.

About the Author: JAMES CARROLL is the author of the New York Times bestseller Constantine's Sword. He won the 1996 National Book Award for his memoir An American Requiem. His ten novels include the bestsellers Prince of Peace and Mortal Friends. His column appears in the Boston Globe. He wrote House of War as a scholar-in-residence at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Boston with his wife, the novelist Alexandra Marshall.