When John Morris died in 1955, he had experienced the most remarkable era in world history. Drawing upon family archives, his grandson Bill Morris, traces his life from birth into a slave-owning family during the Civil War through America's detonation of the first hydrogen bomb. Even as the nation's history unfolds in the background, John's portrait comes into focus: an agnostic in the Bible Belt, he married a Catholic from upstate New York, becoming a total maverick with his remarkably progressive beliefs on race relations, child rearing, and women's rights.

"An immersive and moving portrait of a quietly decent man and his monumental era."—Publishers Weekly