Colin Powell is the embodiment of the American dream. He was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He knew the rough life of the streets. He overcame a barely average start at school. Then he joined the Army. The rest is history - but a history that until now has been known only on the surface. Here, for the first time, he himself tells us how it happened, in a memoir distinguished by a heartfelt love of country and family, warm good humor, and a soldier's directness. He writes of the anxieties and missteps as well as the triumphs that marked his rise to four-star general, National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mastermind of Desert Storm, and now the man the country would most like to draft as President just as it drafted General Eisenhower before him in 1952.