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Most historians come from colleges and universities. They only have limited time to do their research. When they want to publish their work, they have to follow very strict and boring writing guidelines. The author did not have those handicaps. When he retired, he had both the time and a loving wife that would be needed to attack such a difficult project. But like a die-hard explorer, he would also not be stopped by countless obstacles. In the late 1960s, he discovered that the U.S. Navy was about to scrap the country's most decorated WW II battleship, the U.S.S. South Dakota. It did not take him long to organize a state-wide effort to return much of the battleship to South Dakota and build a national WW II museum for our Navy vets. In 1973 the White House tried to get the rights to buy and display the famous 23-sided Paris Peace Talks Table. It was on this table that the U.S. negotiated the end of the Vietnam war. The White House failed in its attempt to acquire this famous piece of furniture. The author made a direct call to the French Prime Minister. He got the rights to the table for his country. The author also had the problem-solving skills to put this gargantuan puzzle together. Before he retired, he was president of Citizens Utilities, a Fortune 500 company that had extensive holdings in communications. He was also co-chairman of Europe's Hungarian Telephone Company. When he was asked, What was it like spending ten years to uncover this story? he simply said, It was like solving 100 complex puzzles that were interconnected to 1,000 smaller puzzles.
