Time of Illusion

"A thoughtful and deservedly acclaimed meditation on the decade which, in 1974, 'finally brought the American Constitutional system to the edge of breakdown'."

Foreign Affairs

"The remarkable achievements of this book are its fairness, its attention to details, and its capacity to put the bewildering complexities of these years into some kind of meaningful historical perspective. Schell, at thirty-two, has avoided the usual partisan and political pitfalls. He has an eye for the illuminating incident, the patience of a scholar, and the gift of clear and muscular prose. If there is a better or more thoughtful and compassionate book on this whole bewildering tragedy, I don't know what it is."

James Reston, Martha's Vineyard Gazette

"By persuasively connecting the Nixon years to the larger dilemmas of our time, Mr. Schell has elevated a shabby political story to the level of tragedy. And one closes his deeply intelligent book not with feelings of vindication or outrage, but with a sense of understanding and equanimity that only tragedy can evoke."

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York TimesJonathan Schell was born in 1943 in New York City. He graduated from the Putney School in Vermont and magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he majored in Far Eastern history and wrote for the Harvard Crimson. He learned Japanese and travelled widely while enrolled in the Graduate School of International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Schell was the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute. He died in 2014.