The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft -- a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history. This is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine -- Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White -- teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure.