America's Rasputin

David Milne's America's Rasputin provides the first major study of the man who pushed two presidents into Vietnam. Walt Rostow's meteoric rise to power—from Flatbush, Brooklyn, to the West Wing of the White House—seemed to capture the promise of the American dream. Hailing from humble origins, Rostow became an intellectual powerhouse: a professor of economic history at MIT and an influential foreign policy adviser to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Too influential, according to some. Whil