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Under the bipartisan leadership of Marshall and Vandenberg, Americans who had just fought World War II to save Europe from Adolf Hitler provided Europe with $13 billion between June 1947 and December 1951. In today's dollars, Mr. Behrman says, the amount would be $100 billion; when calculated as a comparable share of U.S. gross domestic product, the total would exceed $200 billion -- and this for reconstruction rather than war.

The major players in Mr. Behrman's tale include not only Vandenberg but Paul Hoffman, the chief executive of Studebaker, who oversaw the plan's disbursements; diplomat Averell Harriman; economic architect Richard Bissell; undersecretary of state and plan evangelist Will Clayton; and, of course, George Marshall, that rare Washington figure who is described as "free of vanity."

Indeed, when Franklin Roosevelt named Marshall chief of staff of the U.S. Army in 1939 with the task of mobilizing America for war, Marshall accepted on the condition he could always say what he thought. To maintain this independent posture and remain free of Roosevelt's fabled charm, Marshall never visited the president's Hyde Park estate. When Roosevelt once called him "George," Marshall responded that he was "George" only to his wife.

Marshall was so low-key that at a June 1947 luncheon speech at Harvard, when he outlined Europe's dire condition and unveiled his determination to lend economic help, the talk was largely ignored by the leading American newspapers and wire services. (Government officials have since learned the art of pre-speech publicity to ensure that important statements don't go unnoticed.) But British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, lying in his bed in London and listening to Marshall on BBC radio, immediately grasped the significance of what the American was proposing. "It was like a lifeline to sinking men," he said.

Mr. Behrman captures the drama of Europe's postwar desperation (some 100 million Europeans lived on fewer than 1,500 calories a day), and he emphasizes the conviction of Marshall Planners that Europe should take the lead in its own recovery. "Only the Europeans can save Europe," Averell Harriman declared. Paul Hoffman echoed that view: "I had a strong belief that no plan imposed by a group of planners in Washington could possibly be effective. The essence of genuine leadership is to share power with people rather than display power over people." Would that Ambassador Paul Bremer, who styled himself as viceroy of Iraq as he led the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, had held similar views.

The determination to work with European countries and yet insist that Europeans mitigate their nationalism -- and integrate their many small economies into a larger and more vital one -- had a salutary effect. In four short years, Western Europe's industrial production rose 35% above prewar levels, and a long, slow process began that would culminate decades later in the establishment of the European Union. By 1951, Europe had turned the corner.

At the outset, Marshall gauged Americans' tolerance for the enormous undertaking he had in mind: "The country won't stand for this for long." He was right. With the advent of the Korean War in 1950, Washington shifted focus from stopping a European slide into communism to combating communism in Asia. The decline in defense spending that had helped to free up funds for the Marshall Plan was no longer possible. America quickly sent troops to Korea, though they proved to be poorly trained and equipped. Meanwhile, leading Republicans accused the Truman administration of having concentrated too much on Europe while "losing" China to the communists.

George Marshall -- once a hero for mobilizing America's military might to win World War II and America's economic might to save Europe after the war -- was now excoriated as a "cat's-paw and pawn" for Truman administration "traitors." Indiana's Republican Sen. William Jenner lambasted Marshall as an "errand boy, a stooge or a conspirator for this Administration's crazy assortment of collectivist cutthroat crackpots and Communist fellow traveling appeasers."

Some things in Washington never change, though today it is the Democrats leveling vicious charges at a Republican administration. And that is one of the uplifting lessons of "The Most Noble Adventure." Somehow, over time, ordinary Americans have the good sense, despite all the exaggerated rhetoric in Washington, to elect leaders who understand the need for American global leadership and who have the courage -- as Harry Truman did then and George W. Bush has now -- to defy polls and the vicissitudes of popularity ratings in pursuit of principle.

Ms. House, a former Journal publisher, won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Middle East.