From the outset the Pentagon was an anomaly, but it was more than that. Unknown to even its planners and builders the Pentagon was a presaging of a future full of both terror and promise. It was a break in time made manifest on the eve of America’s entry into a global conflict that was to be, before it was over, like no other war that humanity had ever fought, a gigantic stone mile marker on the road to the America of the twenty-first century.

Excerpt copyright (C) 2012 David Alexander. All rights reserved.