Originally published under the title Messages to America, This Decisive Hour is an expanded collection of major cables and letters from Shoghi Effendi to the North American Baha'i community from 1932 to 1946, one of the most tumultuous periods in world history.

These communications represent far more than chapters in a historical record to be closed and laid away. They remain an enduring source of guidance, inspiration, and training and bear witness to the Baha'i Faith's power to build a new spiritual order on the wreckage of the past.