In 1940, inventor J. Ripley Kiel was taken by Secret Service men to the Oval Office, where he planted a microphone in FDR's desk lamp and connected it to an experimental sound recording machine. Since that day, almost every president has found some use for recording. The tapes and transcripts left behind are a cockpit voice recorder of the presidency, time capsules from crucial moments in American history.

During four years of research in the National Archives and presidential libraries, William Doyle unearthed scores of White House tapes and transcripts, many never before published. He interviewed over one hundred Oval Office insiders, Cabinet members, and White House aides, from FDR's personal secretary to Henry Kissinger, to present this riveting flesh-and-blood drama of the presidency in action.