In 1968, the Vietnam War was raging, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had just been assassinated. The Republican Party met in Miami and picked Richard Nixon as its candidate, to little fanfare. But when the Democrats backed Lyndon Johnson's ineffectual vice president, Hubert Humphrey, the city of Chicago erupted. As Norman Mailer recalls in this outstanding work of political journalism, antiwar protesters filled the streets and the police ran amok, battling demonstrators and delegates alike, all broadcast on live television.

"For historians who wish for the presence of a world-class literary witness at crucial moments in history, Mailer in Miami and Chicago was heaven-sent."—Washington Post