This tale of two families is set on a grand scale, as James Thomas Flexner brings his talents to bear on his own noteworthy heritage. An American Saga is an historical narrative, grounded on documentary sources, which ends with the marriage of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner. The account deals equally with the lives and the backgrounds of husband and wife, the author's parents. Simon Flexner was the famous medical investigator, discoverer of the "Flexner vacillus" and the "Flexner serum," who became the creating director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) and eventually acknowledged leader of American medical science. The Kentucky-born son of impoverished German Jewish immigrants, he grew up in penury. As he never completed the eighth grade, he was almost completely self-educated when he appeared at the Johns Hopkins University before its celebrated medical school had been founded. Almost instantly he began making the discoveries that soon made him the leading younger medical scientist in the United States.

The man in the street would not, perhaps, recognize all the names of the brilliant scientists whose careers and personalities animate this book, but doctors know them. Morgan, who founded the first medical school in American and, fighting beside Washington, was ruined b the petty politics of the Revolution; McDowell, who, although on the fringe of the wilderness, dared the operation that prepared the way for all abdominal surgery; Rush, the equivocal personality who, for better or worse, dominated American medicine for more than fifty years; Beaumont, who, saving a life, won a living laboratory; Drake, who brought modern medicine to the New West; Long and Morton, who banished pain from surgery and earned it for themselves these men are honored in their profession today.

James Thomas Flexner has been a professional writer for most of his adult life. After several years spent at the City desk at the New York Herald Tribune after graduating from Harvard University, Flexner went on to become one of America's foremost historians. He has written with great distinction in a unique style accessible to and enjoyed by the scholar and general reader, twenty-six books in the fields of American history and art. Although he is principally known for his kistorical books, notably his four-volume biography of George Washington, Flexner has written in many forms and for many outlets. He has written for print and television; he has been a lecturer, columnist, reviewer, andeven a fiction writer. Collected here are samplings of Flexner's literary accomplishments throughout his long career (spanning over 60 years). In Random Harvest you will find pieces that appeared in Esquire Magaine, Time, The New York Times, Travel and Leisure, and even TV Guide. Included is an essay on George Washington and Watergate, on the art of biography, and many more. For the fan of Flexner, American history, and the art of a writer, in Random Harvest there is something to be enjoyed for everyone.