Traces the Polk family history from its beginnings in Ireland with Robert Pollok and his flight to the New World in 1680. Among the accomplished family members are drafters of an early Declaration of Independence, wounded soldiers of the American Revolutionary War, women taken hostage by Indians, land speculators, slaveholding aristocrats and populist crusaders, one of our greatest presidents, Civil War generals and foot soldiers from North and South, a grandfather who shot the sheriff of Laredo and became a cattle baron, the founders of the Wall Street firm Davis Polk, Patton's lead tank commander, Martin Luther King's lawyer, and the author's amazing brother, a World War II Navy pilot and journalist who was the first casualty of the Cold War.