Inside the cocoon -- Captain Carlo -- Romance in Italy -- Law and politics -- "Where the huckleberries grow" -- The Boston finance commission -- One vote in Worcester -- Attorney General -- The strange case of the Boston strangler -- Running for the senate -- Back to Washington -- Vietnam -- Member of the club -- The President Nixon I knew -- "The freest man in the senate" -- A private matter -- Stormy weather -- Love and redemption -- Private citizen -- Looking beyond
Summary
President Lyndon Johnson never understood it. Neither did President Richard Nixon. How could a black man, a Republican no less, be elected to the United States Senate from liberal, Democratic Massachusetts - a state with an African American population of only 2 percent?. The mystery of Senator Edward Brooke's meteoric rise from Boston lawyer to Massachusetts attorney general to the first popularly elected African American U.S. senator with some of the highest favorable ratings of any Massachusetts politician confounded many of the best political minds of the day