This book is a life story of one of Australia's most internationally-minded politicians; and a life story revealing new perspectives on the tensions between Australian ‘Britishness’ and the rise of the United States as a world power in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The book is innovative in adding the type of social, cultural and intellectual perspectives to broader understandings of Australia's changing orientation in world affairs that can best be appreciated in the context of a prominent life story. One of my main arguments is that Spender's attraction to the ‘American Century’ provided mixed blessings in public life: his independent thinking about Australia's future and the rise of the United States helped ensure political prominence, but through the 1930s to 50s, it also leant a maverick status that was hard to throw off.

The related aim is to reveal the full life story of a figure who is always invoked in studies of Australia in world affairs, but has never been subjected to biographical treatment. In brief, the course of Percy Spender's life fits the pattern of the self-made man. From humble origins he succeeded both scholastically and as a Sydney barrister, and then, as an independent candidate, was elected to federal parliament. He joined the anti-Labor United Australia Party (UAP) and soon won respect and ministerial positions in the Menzies government of 1939–41, and then re-emerged as one of Menzies's senior colleagues in the coalition government elected in December 1949.