A trusted advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson and one of America's leading professors of economic history, W. W. Rostow has helped shape the intellectual debate and governmental policies on major economic, political, and military issues since World War II. In this thought-provoking memoir, he takes a retrospective look at eleven key policy problems with which he has been involved to show how ideas flow into concrete action and how actions taken or not taken in the short term actually determine the long run that we call "the future."

The issues that Rostow discusses are these:

• The use of air power in Europe in the 1940s


• Working toward a united Europe during the Cold War


• The death of Joseph Stalin and early attempts to end the Cold War


• Eisenhower's Open Skies policy


• The debate over foreign aid in the 1950s


• The economic revival of Korea


• Efforts to control inflation in the 1960s


• Waiting for democracy in China


• The Vietnam War and Southeast Asian policy


• U.S. urban problems in disadvantaged neighborhoods


• The challenges posed by declining population in the twenty-first century

In discussing how he and others have worked to meet these challenges, Rostow builds a compelling case for including long-term forces in the making of current policy. He concludes his memoir with provocative reflections on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and on how individual actors shape history.

• Preface
• 1. A Backward Glance: 1916-1938
• 2. The Use of Air Power in Europe, 1942-1945: Should the Allies Have Won the War in Europe in 1944?
• 3. The United States and the Soviet Union, 1945-1999: The Hinge Was Poland
• 4. The Death of Stalin, 1953: The Timing May Have Been Off
• 5. Open Skies, 1955: A Useful Failure
• 6. Eisenhower and Kennedy on Foreign Aid, 1953-1963: The White Hats Triumph after a Fashion
• 7. The Republic of Korea: My Marginal Association with a Miracle
• 8. The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Efforts to Control Inflation, 1957-1972: Innovations Should Be Institutionalized
• 9. China, 1949-: Waiting for a Democratic Revolution
• 10. Vietnam and Southeast Asia: Should the Ho Chi Minh Trail Have Been Cut?
• 11. The Urban Problem, 1991-: Prevention versus Damage Control
• 12. Population, Modern Japan's Fourth Challenge: The Central Problem of the Twenty-first Century
• 13. The Long and Short Periods: A Possible Binding Thread
• 14. Two Final Reflections: One about the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, the Other about the Individual and History
• Appendix A. Draft of Proposed U.S. Plan for a European Settlement: February 1946
• Appendix B
• Appendix C. Text of W. W. Rostow's Seoul National University Speech
• Appendix D. Andrews and Ortega Elementary Schools: Texas Academic Achievement Analysis, 1994-2002
• Notes
• Index