Adlai E. Stevenson's own words -- in letters, postcards, speeches, and attempts at a diary -- are presented in the volumes of The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson.

Volume II, Washington to Springfield 1941-1948, chronicles Stevenson's career as special assistant to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, his mission to war-torn Italy, his work on a bombing-survey mission to France, his collaboration with Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., and Assistant Secretary of State Archibald MacLeish to found the United Nations, his leadership of the United States delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Commission, his participation in the 1946 and 1947 meetings of the General Assembly of the United Nations, and finally, his successful campaign for the governorship of Illinois.

Written in his familiar style -- witty, pungent, sharp, free of pomposity -- illustrated with twenty-two photographs, these papers reveal much about Stevenson's maturing political philosophy, his family and marriage, and his continuing attempts to broaden his education and acquire a deeper understanding of his times.

When completed, these projected eight volumes of The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson will constitute a documentary biography of Stevenson and, at the same time, a documentary history in his own words of the extraordinary and often bewildering changes that remolded the United State and the world during his lifetime -- from 1900 to 1965.