How should the United States be governed during times of crisis? Definitely not as we are in times of tranquility, asserts this classic study. The war on terrorism is a case in point. The horrors of terror attacks on the United States have forced Americans to accept legislative changes that might be unthinkable at other times. The "inescapable truth," Clinton Rossiter wrote in his classic study of modern democracies in crisis, is that "No form of government can survive that excludes dictatorship when the life of the nation is at stake."

A concise treatment of presidential power by a brilliant writer is once again made available with the reissue of this book, first published in 1951. The book is brought superbly up to date by one of Rossiter's former students, Richard P. Longaker. New material covers vital events of the past twenty-five years, including the steel seizure and the dispatch of troops to Korea under Truman, civil disturbances and the Gulf of Tonkin episode under Johnson, the Pentagon Papers case, and the confrontation between Nixon and the Supreme Court.