Before Iraq, before the Bush Administration, before the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam there was John Lennon, the celebrated musical artist who used his fame and his fortune to protest the Vietnam War and advocate for world peace. 1966-1976 was one of the most fractious periods of American history, dominated by the Vietnam War; the rise of antiwar, civil rights, New Left and other political movements challenging the status quo; the Nixon presidency; revelations of government deception, surveillance and harassment; and Watergate. A large and diverse array of the era’s notable figures, men and women, bear immediate and authoritative witness to specific events as well as to the prevailing climate. Among them: African-American political activists Angela Davis and Bobby Seale; journalists Carl Bernstein and Walter Cronkite; Nixon Administration officials G. Gordon Liddy and John Dean; Vietnam veteran and antiwar activist Ron Kovic; the eminent American historian/novelist Gore Vidal; former New York Governor Mario Cuomo; and three-term Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern. Tracing Lennon’s metamorphosis from lovable “Moptop” to anti-war activist to inspirational icon, the true story of how and why the U.S. government tried to silence him is revealed.