The author describes the causes, events and consequences of a conflict he calls a world war in miniature. He addresses such questions as why the Truman administration decided to intrude militarily in Korea after merely protesting when Eastern Europe and China fell to the communists, why the United States risked causing World War III to save a repressive regime and why the Americans settled for something less than the resounding victory they had come to expect. In Whelan's analysis, the war had momentous repercussions for NATO, the UN, Russia, China and the arms race. And it provided the prologue to America's next war in Asia - Vietnam.