Joel Brinkley

HDTV - digital, high-definition television - is an invention so far-reaching that most people cannot yet grasp its full significance. But the new sets are arriving in stores, and we are in the midst of a revolution in television. In Defining Vision, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joel Brinkley takes us inside the creation of HDTV, into a titanic competition between some of the world's most important high-tech corporations battling for a prize worth billions of dollars. Brinkley tells the story from deep inside the laboratories and boardrooms where the race was run. There, scheming contestants employed duplicity, extortion, and, occasionally, creative genius. At the same time, government leaders manipulated the race to their own ends, promoting it one moment and betraying it the next.

Terry Ascher, a State Department officer, is drawn into a scheme designed to draw the U.S. into an invasion of Nicaragua that will take care of the Sandinista problem.

Nobel Prize winning reporter Joel Brinkley illuminates the country, its people, and the deep historical roots of its modern-day behavior.