Since his retirement as Israel's controversial longtime Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir has set down the story of his life, from the years of conspiracy and deep cover in the underground that fought for Jewish independence in the Palestine of the 1940s to the decade he spent in the shadows of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and to his emergence into national and international prominence as the helmsman of Israel's complex, often painful, always precarious foreign and domestic involvements.

Yitzhak Shamir not only discloses his own view of the intricacies of the peace process and present-day US-Israeli relations but also provides insights into such personalities as Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and John Major and into Israel's right wing, its origins, its philosophies and its political heroes.

Finally Shamir analyses the rewards, hazards and price of public service in one of the world's most read-about and talked-about countries and gives his unconventional personal view of the Norway Accord with the PLO. For the first time, this is the story of one of the most important figures in the Middle East - in his own words.