By the time you are finished [reading 'Tuxedo Park'], you are prepared to bestow on Alfred Lee Loomis the title of Most Interesting Man I Never Knew Anything About.

... In 1917, Loomis joined the Army and, as an ordnance researcher, fell into his life's calling -- becoming a world-class tinkerer, inventor, collator and promoter of new ideas.

In 1940, with the Battle of Britain hanging in the balance, Winston Churchill's top scientists came to America bearing a gift, and a plea.

Loomis immediately convened an emergency meeting of the Establishment: his cousin Henry Stimson, the secretary of war; and Stimson's aides John McCloy, Robert Patterson and Robert Lovett. All Yale men, all Harvard Law, all Wall Streeters, all Republicans and all instrumental in starting MIT's wondrous Radiation Laboratory, the Rad Lab.