Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years will be one of the most talked about books of 2007. It tells the inside story of the Kennedy administration, from the perspective of the inner circle of men who served President Kennedy. And it reveals Robert F. Kennedy's dramatic secret search for the truth about his brother's assassination.

Rethinking America's role in the world

Told in a gripping narrative style, Brothers presents a compelling portrait of the Kennedy presidency's heroic, and beleaguered, effort to end the Cold War paradigm -- Us vs. Them -- that still characterizes American foreign policy. Brothers sharply challenges today's fashionably cynical view of the Kennedy administration as a playboy presidency that accomplished little. It also debunks the prevailing view in hawkish circles that President Kennedy was militarily aggressive. Instead, it shows that by bravely and artfully outmaneuvering his own national security team, JFK kept the country out of war and avoided a catastrophic nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union. So estranged did Kennedy become from his military and intelligence advisors, that he frequently worried about a coup or assassination. Brothers tells the previously unknown story of how JFK even prevailed upon his Hollywood friends to make the best- selling political thriller, "Seven Days in May," into a movie, as a warning about the dangers of a military takeover.

Bobby's hidden hunt for his brother's assassins

Brothers also follows the assassination trail that Bobby Kennedy himself pursued after Dallas, as it led him, to his horror, back to the dark corners of American power that were part of his administration portfolio -- U.S. intelligence, Cuba and organized crime. Brothers explains why Bobby was haunted for the rest of his life by the feeling that he could have prevented his brother's murder. The book reveals for the first time that RFK -- who never believed the Warren Report's lone gunman theory, despite public statements to the contrary -- planned to reopen the case if he had lived and been elected president in 1968. And it presents new evidence that indicates Bobby's suspicions about Dallas -- which focused on the CIA's shadowy anti-Castro operation -- were correct.

Kennedy men's last will and testament

Brothers is based on numerous recently declassified government documents and more than 150 exclusive interviews with prominent Kennedy administration officials, close friends and family members -- including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Theodore Sorensen, Richard Goodwin, Nicholas Katzenbach and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. For many of these aging Kennedy veterans, Brothers will be their final testimony on this fabled chapter of American history. (A few key sources for the book, including Schlesinger, died after being interviewed.) Their perspectives on the Kennedy years -- a time when they were young and changing the world -- provide the book with a moving intimacy.

Looking for the next JFK

As the United States once again begins to search for a charismatic, enlightened leader -- a quest that has haunted the country like a recurring dream ever since the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers -- it seems vitally important to understand the true meaning of the Kennedy years. Brothers brings this operatic swath of history to life in a way never done before.