The book picks up where McCain's first memoir, Faith of My Fathers (1999), left off, with his return to the United States following his release as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Interspersed with the autobiographical content are extended vignettes of various figures whom McCain had been inspired by, with treatments sometimes up to ten or more pages in length.

These subjects range from historical presences such as Theodore Roosevelt, to more contemporaneous politicians such as Barry Goldwater, Scoop Jackson and Mo Udall, to people in other fields such as Billy Mitchell and Ted Williams.

Janet Maslin's review of Worth the Fighting For in The New York Times called the interspersed format "curious" and said there was a lot of McCain "shooting from the hip ... in this unpredictable, outspoken memoir."

This edition added a subtitle of sorts, The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him, as well as a new afterward from McCain in which he discussed developments of the year since original publication, including the early stages of the Iraq War.