At forty-three years old, during the height of the Cold War, author Richard H. Shriver was offered an appointment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as director of telecommunications and command-and-control systems. He had a long-standing desire to see from the inside how the government functioned. So Shriver sold his interest in a successful company and took the plunge.

In Glimpses of an Uncharted Life, he shares the consequences of that decision and what life was like from that point. Shriver presents a collection of stories in three parts. The first section, "Foreign Affairs," starts with the beginning of the end of the Cold War. The second section, "Domestic Affairs," narrates his experiences with the federal government and offers observations about government in his state of Connecticut. The final section, "Tapering Off," tells what happens when a calendar that was full for more than fifty years suddenly goes blank.

A book of reminiscences and reflections, Glimpses of an Uncharted Life shares what Shriver and his wife, Barbara, gleaned from living overseas for fifteen years and what they learned about life and people inside communism and inside countries recovering from the collapse of tyrannies.