HE WAS A PROMINENT MEMBER OF CONGRESS, a brilliant administrator, an advisor to Presidents, an influential figure in the old conservative style. He embodied the traits of free thinking and independence that are regarded as emblematic of the American character. he was perhaps he last American ambassador to have any major impact on U.S. foreign policy. Yet, as Robert Browder and Thomas Smith show in their insightful biography, Lewis Douglas spent the final twenty years of his life disillusioned and disenchanted with the direction of American leadership.

Douglas was a true man of the West. Born to a wealthy Arizona mining family in 1894—the city of Douglas was named after the family—he was educated at Amherst College and elected a state legislator at the age of 28. Making himself an expert on water problems, he then went on to four terms as Arizona's lone (and Democratic) congressman in the House of Representatives. In 1933 Douglas was appointed Franklin Roosevelt's first budget director, and tried to bring is financial conservatism to bear on expansive New Deal programs. But after a series of public squabbles with Roosevelt and other New Dealers, Douglas resigned in 1934, became a vocal critic of the administration, and was widely mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. After serving as vice-chancellor of McGill University and as president of Mutual of New York insurance company. Douglas was called back by FDR to head the War Shipping Administration, which he turned into a highly efficient organization that was essential to victory in World War II.

Browder and Smith focus on what was perhaps the most telling of Douglas's roles: his service under President Truman as ambassador to Great Britain from 1947 to 1950. A popular diplomat and a close friend of Winston Churchill, he played a prominent role in the launching of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Blockade, the creation of Israel, and the forging of the North Atlantic alliance.

The last two decades of Douglas's life were a time of frustration and unhappiness with both Republican and Democratic administrations, especially in the area of foreign policy. he did not believe that the United States should be the world's policeman, and he opposed the sending of American troops to Lebanon in 1958, the growing involvement in Vietnam, and the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. He maintained that the U.S. had to draw the distinction between defending its vital interests and resisting changes in the status quo.

Using the voluminous Douglas papers and other private documents, as well as interviews with Douglas's associates, friends, and family, Browder and Smith have chronicled a remarkable career in a book that sheds new light on many historically significant events, and fully portrays the successes and failures, the determination and integrity, the worth, of a truly independent man.