In July 1943, dark, smoky clouds suddenly descended over Los Angeles, causing residents to complain of burning eyes, nausea, and difficulty breathing. People couldn't see across the street and visibility was so bad that cars crashed. With World War II raging, many feared a chemical attack by the Japanese, but it soon became evident that no foreign enemy was to blame. The waves of pollution called "smog" — a combination of "smoke" and "fog" —  continued and the cause remained a mystery. It was the beginning of an epic struggle for clean air involving years of scientific investigation and civic pressure, bringing together people across ideological divides in a remarkable example of bipartisanship. Their work would lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, which have had an enduring effect on the quality of air Americans breathe.

Kissinger begins with the devastating childhood experiences that helped forge Henry Kissinger's political philosophy. In August 1938, after Hitler's government had embarked on a campaign to destroy Germany's Jews, Kissinger's family fled to the United States. Their escape came two months before Kristallnacht and the outbreak of violence that would culminate in the murder of six million Jews (and millions of others), including 13 members of Kissinger's extended family, implanting in Kissinger the durable conviction that power was the prerequisite for liberty.  

As a refugee in New York City, Kissinger worked his way up from a job at a shaving brush factory to a stint as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army ferreting out Nazis in post-war Germany. He returned to earn an advanced degree and professorship at Harvard in government, marking the start of a dazzling career. He became an expert on nuclear weapons policy, eventually securing a position as National Security Advisor for President Richard Nixon at the height of the Cold War. He was an unlikely pick — an awkward academic with a thick accent who hired a staff of ideologically diverse young men, including film interviewees Anthony Lake, Winston Lord, Roger Morris, and Morton Halperin. 

Bedeviled by how to end the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, the Nixon administration turned to increasingly audacious interventions to force Hanoi to the bargaining table, first secretly bombing, then invading neighboring Cambodia. Pundits debated whether these escalations were brilliant strokes of tactical genius or unconstitutional attacks on a neutral nation. Several Kissinger staffers resigned, and protests erupted across America. Public morale reached a bloody nadir on May 4, 1970, with the shooting of antiwar demonstrators at Kent State.