Almost seven years in composition, "Patsy of the Ages: Lee Harvey Oswald and His Nation Half a Century Later" is a unique compendium of fact and opinion plumbing the most disturbing and repercussive events in U.S. politics and foreign policy from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama in 2008. In substance and tone it values above all the imperatives of truth, justice, and independence of mind among citizens of the endlessly contradictory nation Lincoln called, however naively, "the last best hope of earth."