History remembers Robert F. Kennedy as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight. But Kennedy - nurtured on the rightist orthodoxies of his dynasty-building father - started his public life as counsel to the left-baiting, table-thumping Senator Joseph McCarthy. Remembered now as a rare optimist in an age of political cynicism, RFK's profoundly moving journey from cold warrior to hot-blooded liberal also offers a lens into two of the most chaotic and confounding decades of twentieth century America.