Polk's Folly: An American Family History

Doubleday Books, 2000. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good . 6x1x10. Signed by Author. In Very Good+ condition and Very Good+ dustjacket. Signed "William R. Polk" on half title page. The grand saga of American history told through the story of one remarkable family--a chronicle of pioneers and generals, presidents and scoundrels, cowboys and killers, Southern belles and civil rights heroes. And what a history. In these pages one finds drafters of an early Declaration of Independence, oft-wounded soldiers of the Revolutionary War, women taken hostage by Indians, land speculators, slaveholding aristocrats and populist crusaders, one of our greatest presidents, Civil War generals and foot soldiers from North and South, a grandfather who shot the sheriff of Laredo and became a cattle baron, the founders of the powerful Wall Street firm Davis, Polk, Patton's lead tank commander, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s lawyer, and the author's amazing brother, a Navy pilot and journalist who was the first casualty of the Cold War. The saga of this family is the story of the United States. It is both epic in scope and intimate in detail--a unique book for an age obsessed with the past. William Roe Polk (1929 – 2020) was a veteran foreign policy consultant, author, and relation of president James K. Polk . He was a professor of history at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and was President of the latter's Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs.