A concert pianist at age six, a decorated naval hero at twenty, an award-winning journalist at twenty-six, and a congressional investigator at thirty-one, Pierre Salinger was but thirty-five when he became President John F. Kennedy's press secretary. During those amazing years, he found himself, unexpectedly, at the center of many world events - weathering the Cuban Missile Crisis or dining one-on-one with Nikita Khrushchev.

After leaving the White House in 1964 (he stayed on for a while as LBJ's press secretary) Salinger was, briefly, a senator from California and, even more briefly, a movie and TV actor.

Following the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which he witnessed, Salinger resolved to retire from politics and moved to his mother's native France. In no time, he became "the best-known American in France." In 1978, he went to work for ABC Television, soon becoming their Paris bureau chief. Over the ensuing decades, he covered every major story, from the Olympics to Iranian terrorism.