Racing Against History is the untold story of three powerful personalities who sought to turn the tide of history. In 1940, David Ben-Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann—the leaders of the left, right, and center of Zionism—undertook separate missions to America to seek support for a Jewish army to fight Hitler.

Most American young people, like their ancestors, harbor desires for a worthy life: a life of meaning, a life that makes sense. But they are increasingly confused about what such a life might look like, and how they might, in the present age, be able to live one. With a once confident culture no longer offering authoritative guidance, the young are now at sea—regarding work, family, religion, and civic identity.

In this warm and intimate memoir Judge Wilkinson delivers a chilling message. The 1960s inflicted enormous damage on our country; even at this very hour we see the decade’s imprint in so much of what we say and do. The chapters reveal the harm done to the true meaning of education, to our capacity for lasting personal commitments, to our respect for the rule of law, to our sense of rootedness and home, to our desire for service, to our capacity for national unity, to our need for the sustenance of faith. Judge Wilkinson does not seek to lecture but to share in the most personal sense what life was like in the 1960s, and to describe the influence of those frighteningly eventful years upon the present day.

Are we on the cusp of détente with Iran? Conventional wisdom certainly seems to believe so. Since the start of diplomacy between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 powers (the United States, France, England, Russia, China, Germany) in November 2013, hopes have been running high for a historic reconciliation of Iran’s clerical regime with the West.