Customer Reviews:
Nixon was a fine writer!.......2007-10-14
It was risky business for Nixon to write an autobiography for at least a couple of reasons. First, his many detractors would clearly be quick to jump on any discrepancies in the work. Second, as more and more classified information is released by the government, Nixon stood to become a well-documented liar, assuming that there were a few stretchers herein -- and Nixon would have known that such information would be forthcoming someday. Still, he had the brass to write it, and it's a darn fine book.
This autobiography is somewhat unusual in that, not only did Nixon write the book, he also wrote IN to the book, even though he, himself, may not have realized this. In other words, we can tell a LOT about Nixon just by reading between the lines of this one. We can detect when he felt adversarial about someone (the media, for example), and we get a clear feel for some of his well-known (and often well-deserved) paranoia.
Some will bluntly say that Nixon was a crook. Perhaps this is correct but he was an incredibly intelligent and complex man and many positive initiatives were achieved during his long tenure as U.S. President. Of course, he covers all these events in the book and we get a feeling of having the inside scoop for having read about them in this work. So, really, this volume is an excellent "history book" for the era that it covers (essentially, the period from Nixon's birth up through the Watergate affair).
Probably the most profound facet of "R.N." that I picked up on was that Nixon was a huge patriot. He fostered incredibly strong beliefs in manifesting his visions for a great America -- of course, his facilitation of some of those ideas is what got him into trouble.
Nixon remained necessarily vague in certain details of the Watergate scandal and a few cracks in his story have already emerged as a direct result of Privacy Act releases. No doubt, a few more will be forthcoming. But honestly, many of these "events" are simply a matter of perspective, Nixon's paradign versus that of his enemies. In these cases, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I most enjoyed reading about Nixon and his family as he grew up which is a large portion of the book. Nixon was a hard worker and, frankly, I admire his achievement of becoming President, since he was one of the few who made this life-leap, absent a silver spoon.
I read MANY books (3 a week for years) and "R.N." is one of the top 20 books I've ever read and it's in the top 5 of my non-fiction list. Don't be put off by politics in this instance -- this tome of an autobiography is a real page-turner and well-done.
I think.........2007-02-16
what this man did was wrong in terms of his involvement and his support of bullying in the whitehouse. This man was seen as one of the most liberal presidents and founded the Environmental Protection agengy as well as food stamps and strove to implement far reaching welfare reforms. He did many things we equivocate with democratic setbacks, and we have to wonder how much the nation suffered. He tried to protect himself under the presidency: Was he attacked? The FBI tried to sheild us from this man, and we have to wonder where the balance lies. Surely this man did great things perhaps as no president has done after him for social reform. Much to ponder. In later years, he confessed to wrongdoing and advised several presidents without want of attention or credit.I tend to like Mr. Nixon, but tend also to grieve his past actions against the war demonstrators in terms of actions he could not implement as he did not have the support of the FBI. The problem was the wire tapping of journalists, and the breaking into a psychiatrists office to try to get info on one of the journalists who oppose Nixon. Yes,much to think about. Am I bothered by racial remarks he's made on tape when he tried to institute the largest welfare program since FDR saved us from the depression? Save for perhaps Kennedy..No. I think his actions counterbalance the remarks he's made. The wiretapping and the break in are his shame, more so the wiretapping as I'm not sure about the extent of the involvement he had in that. I enjoy Mr. Nixon's attempt to guide the nation via advice of succeeding presidents and look forward to reading thE progressive social policy that's in his seven books.
Slice of history from a man who shaped it.......2007-02-02
It's always a wondrous experience delving into the lives of American presidents. By now, the trends seem consistent with each other in several respects: the humble beginnings in a kindly rural area (for Nixon, it was a Puritan home in southern California), the warm anecdotes growing up, life in higher education, early political careers and relationships, and finally the culmination of the presidency. It is a terrific journey for the reader that Nixon led an eventful and important life (the Alger Hiss case, his foreign policy, Vietnam, Watergate, etc). Obviously, Nixon's presidency occurred much before my time, so it is worthwhile to gain insight from a perspective that I will double-back on after pouring through, I am sure, the hundreds of material analyzing Nixon's life.
This hefty tome is not only a warm autobiography, but it is also an insider's account into the astounding 20th century. Nixon shaped the century's most crucial events, such as Vietnam and the Soviet threat, which the memoir documents with appreciative detail. Occasionally, of course, the author slips in an expected self-justification for some wrongdoing that occurred, while sometimes barely addressing others (I found it humorous, about one Nixon tale, how he broke into a college professor's office to peek at his exam results; needless to say it's not here).
This is all standard recounting of important life events from a president, but it stands out for being written by a monumental figure that will forever be tied to political life and, more importantly, to political scandal.
History by the man who caused history.......2006-02-06
I read it twenty-five years ago and just read it again. Fast paced until he gets bogged down in justifying his actions in Watergate. Nixon was an excellent writer, but his self-justification requires you to read other bios of the 37th President. From Jerry Vorhis to Alger Hiss to John Dean, a great take on postwar American history by someone who was there.
RN - A Deeply Flawed, Great Man. Fascinating. .......2005-08-08
Nixon became president the month I was born and had left the scene before I became politically aware. Nobody spoke of him during the 70's, or of Johnson for that matter - they belonged to a past era which nobody much wanted to revisit, and so I knew very little about either of them as a kid or teen.
By resigning Nixon had admitted at least some guilt in the vast number of things he was accused of and his abdication was a political cataclysm. Through my childhood years he lived out his old age as a pariah off in San Clemente, California, the personification of the period of enormous turbulence during the height of the Vietnam war. He was the living embodiment of the dark heart and excess of the GOP, and everyone, especially in Democratic Massachusetts, considered him a cancer on the body politic and was happy he was gone.
But his resignation was sincere and he was mostly contrite. In retirement he was a sad old giant in exile and after a while the Press which had hounded him out of office allowed him some dignity as an elder statesman and left him alone.
He's nothing like the caricature I expected. I have to say - I really like him. He's very thoughtful, well spoken, modest, with good intentions towards the country and had a warm, respectful dialogue with the major statesmen and characters of the day.
It's a beautifully written book. It was easy to see how he had become a leader. He had the air of solid, calm composure and reasonableness which I admire. As for doublespeak tendencies, the clues are missing for someone who didn't live through that time period.
The contrast with Bush could not be more clear. Maybe the candor came from Nixon's retirement, but I can't imagine Bush being this straight and honest with his audience. POTUS 43 isn't smart or eloquent enough to write this kind of book, and he's too secretive to make that leap of trust with the little people to allow them into his mind.
Of course Nixon was at least as bad as Bush - he was famous for having a blind-spot as big as a barn, which one can see in his writing. Despite the resignation, he wasn't entirely remorseful - he saw himself as the victim of many media conspiracies and other antagonists, both real and imagined. But Nixon has the breadth of worldview and honesty with himself, and by extension the reader, to allow us into his world.
His dark tendencies had other origins. In an era when 30 soldiers were being killed in Vietnam every single day - over ten times the volume of Iraq - and the world convulsing in protest and chaos around them, Nixon's lieutenants and were just brutalized by their environment and lost their sense of direction and fought back with every realpolotik' weapon and dirty trick they could imagine.
Nixon himself is much too close to the action to see how complicit he was - and as the leader he was de-facto fully culpable. But he did take responsibility resign over it - so if it is noble to forgive, then he deserves some rest.
My folks on the other hand strongly disliked Nixon because they thought the GOP machine had sabotaged all the moderate Democratic primary candidates, leaving only Muskie and worse, McGovern, who were far too weak and radical. So he had effectively dismantled the American democratic process - even aside from the Watergate bugging and coverup. Nixon's Southern Strategy of making the GOP a safe place for whites upset by the Civil Rights movement, is still the dominant fault-line in American politics.
Now, after the cancer has been lanced and we have survived him, Nixon's transgressions feel like water long past under the bridge. I'm only sad and sorry that he passed away. He was a wise, complex man and this book shows that his shadow is still very large.
Customer Reviews:
Richard M. Nixon : Excellent political memoir.......2002-05-27
"Even Richard Nixon has got soul", wrote Neil Young in his song 'Campaigner'. This book chronicles Richard Nixon's rise and fall with candid honesty and demonstarates a warmth and human falibilty that does indeed afirm Young's lyric.
I was surprised at Mr. Nixon's book in that I was unsympathetic at the time with his handling of Vietnam and felt he was out of touch with the vast anti-war movement in the USA. I feel now that he was harshly judged and that he should be saluted for his untiring efforts to maintain freedom and democracy in Asia.
The best parts of the book are when he describes meetings with other world leaders and provide a fascinating insight into the process of diplomacy at the highest level of goverment.
The Watergate sections are complicated and one is left with the impression that he got into a hole and could'nt stop digging.
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the machinations of high politics and anyone who wishes an insight into a turbulent period in American history.
Historically, a first rate book.......2001-06-12
Richard Nixon experienced a "comeback" in the late 70's and throughout the 80's, and it started with this excellent book. In it, he goes through all of the relevant things concerning his family experiences, and, of course, his politcal life, culminating in the Presidency and then complete disgrace. But this book isn't really a "downer," and it has wonderful Historical value. It is an excellent read as well as a terrific buy.
Customer Reviews:
Dont be stupid.......2006-08-26
1 "1" how the hell could they have ended the war when Hanoi demanded a unilateral pullout and that the US toppled the Saigon government on the way out?? It took years of political and military pressure for Hanoi to abandon that demand. Dont be stupid.
1-1 is a raving idiot.......2005-12-02
1-1 has cut and pasted the same idiotic rant for all three volumes of Dr. Kissinger's memoirs, and has obviously NOT READ ONE SINGLE PAGE OF ANY OF THEM!!!! Go post your polemics on Indymedia you moron.
This is a first rate account of one of the most influential statesman in history.
War Criminal.......2005-03-01
if you want the evil truth about Dr K and how he undermined the 1968 peace talks, read "No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam" by Larry Berman.
This book explains how Nixon and Kissinger illegally colluded with SVN and Nguyen Van Thieu - he was told by Nixon via Anna Chenault to "hold on, we are going to win" and "you will get a better deal with us". So Thieu says he won't talk peace, Nixon wins, Kissinger openly changes sides after working with the Democrats, and together they crank up the war.
The point is: The War could have ended in 1968 if it were not for this man - Dr Death himself, Henry Adolf Kissinger!
Architect of a modern foreign poligy.......2005-01-24
I started this book on a whim in a coffee shop and soon decided to read all 1,475 pages (which required buying the book!) Kissinger has an amazing story to tell and writes exceptionally well. He gives vivid descriptions of encounters with world leaders and of Washington politics. His reflections range over history, politics, culture in many countries, war, and US policy.
He is full of surprises, sharp-edged, hilarious, philosophical, and always authoritative. Professor Kissinger doesn't use fancy words. He is never aloof. His purpose is to make the material understandable. Some passages about negotiations have perhaps more detail than one really wants.
The last four years of the Viet Nam war figure prominently in the book. Nixon and Kissinger's insistence on winding down the war slowly over four years is controversial. The whole book is unsentimental, convincing and will appeal to the liberal or conservative reader. It is also a revealing study of the "Cold War", including Nixon's trip to China, the Middle East, the SALT treaty, European relations, war between India and Pakistan, and more.
"The Longest Journey Begins With The First Step".......2001-01-23
The title of this review stems from an ancient Chinese proverb. Henry A. Kissinger's book, White House Years is the first of a three-volume trilogy that covers his remarkable career. This initial book begins with his appointment as National Security Advisor to Richard M. Nixon January 1969, and ends with the initialing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Kissinger lets the reader know early on, they were under no illusions their journey would be easy or joyous.
He paints a vivid picture of Lyndon Johnson at Nixon's inauguration. If a political heavyweight like L.B.J. could be humbled by (sic) "Veetnam" no one could expect an easy time. Nixon, who had made a career of exhorting political opponents to, "Get tough with the Communists," now had his turn. He would either succeed where his predecessors had failed, or share L.B.J.s fate.
A series of opportunities to "get tough" with the Communists soon followed. The Soviets continued to harass Berlin; the Strateg!ic Arms Limitation (SALT) Talks provided critics from the right and left; West German leader Willie Brandt's Ostpolitik threatened the cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance and the Soviets' establishment of a submarine base at Cienfuegos, Cuba created a situation reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also, the election of Salvador Allende in Chile threatened to introduce a second, Communist state into the Western Hemisphere. Elsewhere, a crisis was brewing between India and Pakistan, and the powder keg in the Middle East threatened to explode at any time.
All these things occurred while the bulk of our military forces were mired in a seemingly endless stalemate in Vietnam that was tearing our nation apart and steadily draining both our coffers and our national resolve. Any of them had the potential to bring the two nuclear equipped superpowers into direct confrontation at any time. Kissinger calmly states: "Statesmen do not have the right to ask to serve only in simple t!imes." The early '70's were anything but, "simple times."
White House Years is a first-person account from a key player in each of these crises. Kissinger takes us step-for-step through the decision-making process they undertook before each action. These deliberations led to the most spectacular diplomatic initiative of our time: Nixon's historic trip to The Peoples Republic of China! The diplomatic opportunities made possible by this trip still shape our world today. Among other things it made Hanoi serious about negotiating an end to the War in Vietnam.
Dr. Kissinger narrates the maddening, secret negotiations with North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho in Paris. The differences between what the Communists were feeding the Western media and what they were saying behind closed doors makes the reader both loathe and admire them for their political skill. Their efforts finally led to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Kissinger sincerely believed South Vietnam would surv!ive. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
White House Years reads like a Greek tragedy. The reader gets excited and then remembers how it all ends. The very secretiveness that produced spectacular successes also sowed the seeds that would lead to Nixon's self-destruction.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the War in Vietnam and/or international relations. The conduct of international diplomacy today is still unquestionably influenced by the events narrated here. I am much better informed for having read it. You will be as well!
Average customer rating:
- Factoids aren't facts
- Ackowledgement of Defeat?
- Setting the record straight
- Eye opening
- Vietnam & Current Afghanistan: Similarities
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No More Vietnams
Richard Nixon
Manufacturer: Arbor House Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0877957266 |
Customer Reviews:
Factoids aren't facts.......2005-11-03
The previous review stated "Nixon refused to acknowledge African-Americans were over-represented in Vietnam. Today, this fact is a given." For many years I thought so too, until I saw the official statistics:
88.4% of the men who actually served in Vietnam were Caucasian: 10.6% (275,000) were African-American; 1% belonged to other races
86.3% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasian (includes Hispanics); 12.5% (7,241) were African-American; 1.2% belonged to other races
170,000 Hispanics served in Vietnam: 3,070 (5.2% of total) died there
70% of enlisted men killed were of Northwest European descent
86.8% of the men who were killed as a result of hostile action were Caucasian; 12.1% (5,711) were African-American; 1.1% belonged to other races
14.6% (1,530) of non-combat deaths were among African-Americans
34% of African-Americans who enlisted volunteered for the combat arms
Overall, African-Americans suffered 12.5% of the deaths in Vietnam at a time when the percentage of African-Americans of military age was 13.5% of the total population
Sources: Department of Defense casualty records
Labor Department
Department of Veterans' Affairs
National Personnel Records.
Ackowledgement of Defeat?.......2005-04-16
While a having a great deal of potential, this book begins to loose credibility in the initial pages. When writing this book in 1985, Nixon refused to acknowledge African-Americans were over-represented in Vietnam. Today, this fact is a given. By definition, Vietnam was a civil war. The Domino Theory never fell like it was supposed to. With this knowledge skewed in the first pages, much of the information in this book should be taken with a grain of salt.
The war protestors are the dominant image that comes to mind when one thinks of the Vietnam era. After essentially calling doves "communists" (p. 16), Nixon wavers as to the effects of the protestors. It is agreeable to say that they poisoned the nation's foreign policy and diplomacy attempts, but Nixon is reluctant to suggest that the protestors had a direct effect on the withdrawal. In his drive to present himself in a positive light, I believe he loses touch with reality in these discussions. This bias takes away from his excellence in discussing his insight to the war.
Nixon is highly critical of the Vietnam decisions made by Kennedy and Johnson. Nixon suggests LBJ failed to win the war because he failed to gain public support for the cause (p. 79). In this instance, he suggests the media poisoned the public's minds. Nixon never was a fan of the press. He suggests victory was made impossible when LBJ called for the 1968 bombing halt which exposed our poker face and willingness to end the war. We showed North Vietnam our strongest desire was to end the war which meant they only had to outlast us rather than defeating us. In reality, this logic is hard to argue. The only disagreement one could have with this is that there was so much about the war that was poorly planned. LBJ's mistake started a Domino Effect of another kind.
In the book, Nixon looses sight of something much bigger. Vietnam is not about the Nixon defination of morality and moral obligation. Many revolutions in African far outweigh the human rights violations that were occurring in Vietnam during this era. Yet the United States never intervened in an African crisis until the 1990's. Ask the soldiers who fought in Vietnam what the battle was about. Ask the mentally unhealthy and permanently disabled veterans if their sacrifice was worth it. As a fan of Nixon, I expected a more humble explanation of Vietnam, yet I should have known better. Communism is such a flawed system that it fell apart without a war. It is not the wave of the future, the wave is "good-bye". Based on this present day knowledge, it is easy to realize that the Vietnam war was a mistake. However, the insights provided by Nixon in this book still make it an interesting read.
Setting the record straight.......2003-09-07
Conventional wisdom dictates that the Vietnam war was a mistake, a clossal blunder from day one. It was not only a war America lost, but a war that was "unwinable." America was brutally opposing a peaceful peasant revolution that wanted nothing more than freedom and independence after years of foreign rule. This message has been constantly re-enforced by the mass media, through award-winning motion pictures, songs, plays, novels, and poems. The Vietnam war, or more specifically the war's underlying "injustice," has become an American cultural icon of epic proportions. And yet, as Richard Nixon so eloquently points out in this book, almost every single piece of "conventional wisdom" on the war is in fact blatantly wrong.
It's often argued by members of the left that conservative politicans are sheltered, ignorant, uneducated men, who could not five minutes in an intelectual foreign policy debate with some highbrow university professor. What really impressed me about this book was the degree to which Nixon knew all the allegations that had been launched against him, and against the war. Nixon goes through the lists of myths about the war one-by-one, catagorically dismissing the lies that have been spread by all the left-wing revisionists over the years.
He dismisses the myth of Ho Chi Minh as a benevolent "Vietnamese George Washington," and exposes him as the Stalinist thug he really was. Similarly, he defends President Diem of South Vietnam, acknowledging his faults, but at the same time giving him credit for being a true leader of an independent Vietnam, instead of trying to mold the country into a foreign totalitarian model, like Ho. He explains how the Vietnam war was never a mere "civil war" led by South Vietnamese uprisings against Diem, but instead a carefully calculated campaign of brutal terrorism, led by Ho Chi Minh's proxy agents stationed in the south.
Most importantly of all, Nixon also puts to rest the long-held leftist myth that the US and South Vietnam refused to hold scheduled elections to unite the country, as mandated by the Geneva convention. He explains that not only were these "scheduled elections" never even agreed upon by either of the Vietnams in the first place, it was the North, and not the South that actually provided the biggest resistance for this impractical pipe-dream to ever be implemented.
Nixon was a politician as partisan as they come, yet for the most part in this book he puts his political beliefs aside to defend a war that was tackled by presidents of both parties. Nixon defends Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and their actions, dismissing the critics claims that these men were "war criminals" or worse. He is a bit harsh on Kennedy at times, and regards the Kennedy-backed coup against Diem as a colassal blunder. But even then he is quick to paint Kennedy and other Democrats as gullible victims of the loud and intimidating anti-war movement.
The final chapter of the book is excellent, as Nixon carefully explains the strategic and moral importance of preserving the freedom and independence of "third world" nations. Though at the time he was talking about Communist subversion, his lessons can just as easily be applied to the current war on terror. Just as the United States fought for years to prevent the third world from falling under Soviet influence, so now must the United States fight to prevent the arab world from being exploited by terror networks in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The Vietnam war failed, Nixon argues, because the various presidents failed to accurately make the case for war. That is an important lesson to be learned, and hopefully the current president will be careful to never let the American people lose sight of the reason for the war in Iraq.
Nixon was one of America's most brilliant presidents. It is a shame his personal failings brought down an administration with such truly noble goals for the world.
Eye opening.......2002-11-14
I'm a student and this book was a required reading. Easily the best required reading I've ever had to do. I had never fully understood Vietnam. Why we were there, what we did while there and why we left. This book was an excellent asset in understanding Vietnam and I recommend it especially to students since it can be easily read in 2 to 3 days. :)
Vietnam & Current Afghanistan: Similarities.......2002-02-20
During the height of the Vietnam war, I was a junior high/senior high school student and never really understood what was the purpose of the war. I have read many books since and have a fairly good understanding of the how's and why's of the war. However, reading Nixon's book was a real eye opener. He lucidates very well how the US got involved in Vietnam; the major mistakes the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made in running the war; the smear campaigns by the media against the Presidents and their policies; why Nixon bombed Vietnam in 1972 and mined Haiphong harbor; how the peace protestors played into Uncle Ho's hands. I was stunned to learn this information. Nixon was, by far, an exceptional and gifted statesman and writer. He even stated that the next threat to world peace and to the US will come from terrorism (this was written in 1985!). Nixon states that the "civilized world must develop a unified policy for dealing with terrorism" and that terrorists "may be deterred once they realize that by using terror they will spark the wrath of all nations that do not want to exist in a world riven by a tiny minority who have resorted to violence...." If you want to understand the current problems in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda and O. bin Laden, Nixon's book has fascinating parallels from the Vietnam War to learn from. A book certainly worth reading!
Customer Reviews:
A great book.......2007-04-16
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-94) is well remembered for the Watergate scandal, but he is also remembered as one of the greatest foreign policy strategists that the United States ever had. Seize the Moment was President Nixon's next-to-last book, and was published in 1992. This was after the successful end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War, when talking-heads were talking about the "end of history," and/or that America was a declining power that needed to withdraw from world leadership.
In this book, President Nixon argues against these myths, and outlines the course that the United States must take in dealing with the rest of the world. Included are chapters on the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Pacific Triangle, the Muslim world, and the southern hemisphere. However, the best chapter is the final one - The Renewal of America - in which he discusses what needs to be done to renew the United States, and prepare it for the challenges of the future.
Overall, I found this to be a great book, one that really shows off President Nixon's abilities. Indeed, while reading this book I couldn't help but wish that Presidents Clinton and Bush the Younger had read it. This is a very interesting book, one that I highly recommend to anyone who wants to consider where the county is going from here.
World's view of a respectable politian.......2000-12-03
I think the previous review is a little bit unfair. Nixon was certainly an old man when he wrote the book but his mind was clear. Remember he had been there and he knew that it is not pretty in the international arena. Someone said he was a paranoid, but remember that these paranoids exist so that the normal people can be watching their mindless TV and buying their new cars. We don't want to believe that terrible things exist in this world when you are surrounded by the media. Actually it is everyone duty to fight against the "evils (many liberals nowadays considered that as a matter of opionions)." So, please give me a break when you have done nothing for your country but critized a respectable political view from a less-than-perfect politian (should be considered as flawless when compared to Mr. Clinton).
no wonder it's out of print...........2000-06-01
Historically useful but passe, the book is written with a friendly tone of Machiavellian paranoia. The constant emphasis on COMPETITION between superpowers is boyish as well as tedious.
Book Description
An extremely entertaining compendium of bon mots, anecdotes, and trivia about Winston Churchill from a leading Churchill lecturer and performer -- useful for speakers, students, of history, and World War II buffs, as well as general readers.
Customer Reviews:
Must Read!.......2007-08-10
Have if you're like me and have a lot of friends that don't read (but love Blue Collar Comedy Tour...) then you can start using quotes right out of this book and they will think you just came down from the mountain of knowledge and wisdom. Hey you can even use this for those fun quotes at the bottom of your email! Look how global you can become, yes you!
Great book, very well organized and really a lot of fun to read. Winston Churchill was truly a clever man and would be on my top 10 list of Dudes I would like to have a Newcastle with.
Robb Boyd from Cisco's TechWiseTV is number one on the beer list...
Entertainment.......2007-06-08
A delightful book. I thought the author a little too sycophantic for my taste (I am an Australian after all) but the contents are very entertaining. You can dip into it at any place and read for two minutes or two hours and have a good chuckle.
review of wit and wisdom of Winston Churchill.......2005-09-12
The book is entertaining. It's the kind of book you don't just read through, but pick it up read a few sections at a time.
Utterly Delightful.......2004-10-23
A compact book with more than 1,000 quotations and anecdotes you can enjoy at any time.
Here are just a few:
Violet Asquith, the irrepressible daughter of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, found a kindred spirit in Churchill, who served in her father's Cabinet.
Once, in a flight of philosophical gloom, she turned to her dinner partner and said, "Winston, in terms of infinity, we are cosmic dust - we are just worms."
"Perhaps, Violet", Churchill replied, "but I am a glowworm."
* * *
If "Franglais" has been only recently coined to describe the bastardizing of the French language by English words, Churchill may have been the sire of this hybrid argot. Sometimes his additions to the noble Gallic tongue were even more attrocious than his accent.
During some delicate negotions at Casablanca, the stubborn Charles de Gaulle denounced an Allied plan to fuse him and his rival, French general Henri Giraud. Churchill, glaring at the Gaulle, delivered this concoction: "Si vous m'obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai!" (If you obstacle me, I will liquidate you!) A bewildered de Gaulle backed off.
* * *
In 1900, the twenty-six-year-old Churchill, after just being elected to Parliament, made a speaking tour of America. In Washington, he was introduced to a majestically endowed woman from Richmond, Virginia, who prided herself upon her devotion to the "lost cause of the Confederacy." Her family were Democrats who had opposed the Repubican policy of Reconstruction.
Anxious that Churchill should know her sentiments, she remarked as she gave him her hand, "Mr. Churchill, you see before you a rebel who has not been Reconstructed."
"Madam," he replied with a deep bow that surveyed her decolletage, "reconstruction in your case would be blasphemous."
Power of Words in the Majestic Battle of Ideas.......2003-11-04
In this book, James C. Humes gives his audience an excellent opportunity to conjure up a mental picture of Winston Churchill and his legacy. As a renaissance man, Churchill was more than a skilled politician and a gifted soldier. Perhaps more importantly, Churchill was a man of inspired words, whose work was ultimately crown by the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. Churchill often was far from politically correct and did not hesitate to say, write and do what he thought was right. Churchill's bluntness did not make him dear to everybody.
Humes first brings to light many of the great thoughts of Churchill in "Observations and Opinions." Humes classifies key words alphabetically without giving context so that readers can easily find a quote of their liking about a specific subject. Some readers might get frustrated about it if they are not familiar with the key milestones in the life and career of Churchill. These readers can read books such as "Churchill a Life", "Churchill a Study in Greatness", "Clementine Churchill The Biography of a Marriage" or "Winston and Clementine The Personal Letters of the Churchills" to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of Churchill for that purpose.
Humes forges ahead in a similar way in "Orations and Perorations", "Coiners of Phrases", "Saints and Sinners" and "Escapades and Encounters." In these sections, Humes is usually very good at giving his audience the context so that readers better understand where Churchill was coming from. Hours of fun and laughter are virtually guaranteed, especially in "Escapades and Encounters."
Churchill's witticism, wisdom and oratory probably reached their climax in the faithful summer of 1940 when Britain stood alone against the Nazi monster. Churchill galvanized by his words and actions the civilized world to soldier on when the horizon seemed hopelessly bleak. As President Franklin Roosevelt said to his aide Harry Hopkins after listening to one of Churchill's radio broadcasts during that period: "As long as that old bastard is in charge, Britain will never surrender." The words of Churchill will continue to resonate for a long time in the heart and soul of humanity. Churchill's words will further shine like diamonds in the night when humanity loses hope from time to time.
Average customer rating:
- RN: One of us; "the silent majority."
- a tough book to rate
- Now really. . .
- An excellent and concise account of Nixon's Vietnam War
- policy discussions during the nixon administration
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One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream
Tom Wicker
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
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ASIN: 0394550668
Release Date: 1991-02-27 |
Book Description
From his seemingly "poor boy makes good" childhood to his college years, this piercing, perceptive examination of the people, places, and events that shaped the character of Richard Nixon gives the reader a rare and a fair glimpse of the forces that shaped him.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
RN: One of us; "the silent majority." .......2007-02-19
Richard Nixon. The mere mention of the name is enough to inspire some of the most mean-spirited, gut reactions. On the other hand, as Mr. Wicker quotes a Nixon associate in his book "you get back out of life what you plow into it." For all of his dark, quirky, idiosyncracies, RN, was in many ways "One of Us."
Tom Wicker paints about as sympathetic and generous portrait of the late 37th president as you are going to get from a liberal New York Times reporter. The book is not without its snide and petty moments. Wicker, for whatever personal or professional reasons, has a field day down-playing the communist infiltration of the government in the Truman administration and describing, rather underwhelmingly, the high drama of the Alger Hiss case.
The key quote, a quote in which the entire premise of the book rests upon, comes from none other than Henry A. Kissinger who poignantly asks "What would he (RN)have been like had somebody loved him?" At this point in the book, it all comes together: Here was an enormously gifted man who, because of his inner doubts and insecurities, destroyed himself from within. Missing, unfortunately, was RN's remarkable comeback to respectability. This book retains a slight flavor of the animous that "establishment liberals" had for the man who came from a decidely lower-middle class/working-poor background; a man who was a self-made man in every sense of the word.
At times Wicker's attempt at amateur psychologist is agonizing. How can he possibly know what he knows re: RN's motivations, thoughts, desires, secrets, fears, etc. But to be fair, The Old Man was so uncomfortable with himself, so quirky and ill-at-ease "an introvert in an extrovert's" world, as he described himself, perhaps the only way to get your head around the man is to put him on the couch. I think that Fawn Brodie, who wrote a pscyo-babble biography of RN and Thomas Jefferson was hardly a source to be consulted. Notwithstanding, comments from Nixon relatives Lucille Parsons, Jessamyn and Merle West are highly insightful. It is, however, very unfortunate that Wicker is not more generous in his treatment of RN's parents, particularly his Quaker mother and the influence he had on her life. Father Frank Nixon is made to look like nothing more than a loud-mouth lout; Hannah is portrayed as this taciturn, cold, unfeeling mother who could not find it in her heart to express emotion. In short, I think Wicker has been watching too much Oprah, because not everyone feels the need to show their soul bare-naked to the world. Especially those of RN's generation and ethnic/religous group. Outward signs of affection were not the norm. Yet Wicker, instead of appreciating the diversity of the human condition, chooses to pathologize Mrs. Nixon's behavior (he does a good job on Pat in this regard as well).
Jonathan Aitken's biography Nixon: A Life gives a fuller, more balanced and nuanced portrait of the impact pacifist Hannah Nixon had on her precocious son, as well as a better balanced account of who Frank Nixon was and why he was the way he was. Wicker's analyses of Nixon's parents, and of Nixon himself, are too simplistic and, at times, just plain mean.
a tough book to rate.......2005-10-28
Over the last few years I've read 35 presidential biographies, usually using Amazon readers as my guide to picking the best available choice. It's difficult to find a balanced Nixon biography, and I eventually chose Wicker's One of Us, but rating this book is difficult too. First, it's more of a political biography than a retelling of Nixon's life, but Nixon was so driven by politics that this decision doesn't seem to leave much out. Second, Wicker is more interested in describing who Nixon was than he is in telling a straight narrative. Once, he has given the reader the complete picture of Nixon's psyche, Wicker just stops writing. He leaves out Watergate and the last year and a half of Nixon's presidency. I don't know if Wicker felt too close to Watergate or if he just got tired of writing. Third, there have to be more editorial oversights in this book than just about any serious biography I've read. Towards the end of the book, I had the feeling that Wicker or the editor just turned on the spell checker but didn't bother to make sure the correct words were used.
Despite these major criticisms there is a great deal of merit to One of Us. Although there is a fair amount of psycho-babble, Nixon is certainly in the top 5 presidents as far as needing to be explained from a psychological perspective. And Wicker absolutely nails Nixon's personality. The reader gets the absolutely driven, intelligent, paranoia, manipulative Nixon who has a realpolitik approach to ethics and values.
Nixon was the first president who I really grew up in terms of a broad awareness of the issues of the times. Wicker does a great job of capturing America's concerns. We were obsessed with finding communists under every rock. Civil rights and race rights led to code words like law and order, Students got divided into good kids or rock throwers with little in between. With each of these issues Nixon found a way to play to his constituency, "the silent majority", in an often manipulative way that played more to television sound bites than solutions.
Finally, for the Nixon skeptics out there, this book deals well with Nixon's supposed skills at international relations. It shows how the team of Nixon and Kissinger working together while ignoring the advice and consent of the Congress, State Department, or even the CIA led to serious long-term problems in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Cambodia, with missile reduction treaties, and on and on. Wicker's analysis is difficult to dispute, and it is a powerful argument against the sort of power diplomacy used by Nixon and his ilk.
Now really. . ........2005-07-08
One of us??? Well, I guess -- if you consider yourself part of a group of square, sex-hating, self-deluded, egomaniacal bores who refer to themselves in the third-person. Actually, that would be unfair to all the self-deluded, sex-hating squares in our midst. 'Cause Richard Nixon was part of nothing other than the squalor of his own mind. When he looked out at the world, what he saw was the inside of his own eyeballs.
Tom Wicker -- the quintessent(is that a word?) liberal panty-waste gets two stars here because of the unintentional humor of the tome. (It is almost 800 pages of tome.) But the humor is more than off-set by the outrage of the book. For it is a historical lie. All the so-called "progressive" achievements of Nixon's time (the EPA, expansion of voting rights and other minority protections, worker safety rules, etc) were accomplished IN SPITE of Dick Nixon, not because of him. They were gifts of that time because of the Congress, the media, and mostly -- oh how far we've come -- because the American people were then in much better touch with their own interests. Nixon, to quote Ed Harris as E.Howard Hunt -- was the darkness reaching out to the darkness, and our own very dark time is still haunted by the vicious hatred of all democratic values unleased by the Whittier Vampire. George W. Bush is much more the child of Nixon, than of his own father.
An excellent and concise account of Nixon's Vietnam War.......2003-11-11
Chapter 14, pp 569-614 of "One of Us" is probably the best account of Richard Nixon's Vietnam War policy that I have read. Most Vietnam books tend to skimp on the latter years of the war, when it was winding down. In general this book is very even-handed and at times surprisingly sympathetic. However, Wicker is also honestly frank in his criticisms of Nixon's Vietnam policy and other aspects of his foreign policy.
The reviewer is the author of "Killed In Action: The life and times of SP4 Stephen H. Warner, draftee, journalist and anti-war activist"
policy discussions during the nixon administration.......2003-09-29
good work on the policies during the nixon adminstration
very clear and concise writing in laymen's terms of some rather complex subject matters. the writier's skill in presenting his ideas clearly are done very well inthis book.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting and informative.......2005-04-01
For a guy that didn't grow up during Watergate, I found the third volume in this series to be a real page turner. Ambrose does a good job of telling you what happened, why it happened, how the public saw it and all the ways Nixon tried to keep the public from seeing it all.
Ruin and Recovery is a great subtitle for this volume because Nixon truly did recover. There were a few things he never lost... his ability to guage the American people and how they felt about candidates and the ability to breakdown foreign affairs. It was good to see that in the final years of his life he was called on as an expert on both.
I'm going to say it..."I ADMIRE RICHARD NIXON." Obviously I don't admire his Presidency or his decision-making during Watergate... but... for the most part I feel he was an idealistic, patriotic person that took a bad path and ruined his place in history at least when it comes to his Presidency. He did many things that Americans should respect though and it's high time we did.
I am glad he has made a recovery in the minds of many Americans and as I read this final volume I think I saw Ambrose almost making a case for Nixon being a kinder, gentler person who should be slightly more respected in American history.
Everybody makes mistakes and true Nixon made a big one, but I think in this final volume Ambrose almost makes a personal peace with Nixon and in a way advises Americans who resented Nixon to do the same.
Really an enjoyable series of books that I would recommend to anyone willing to spend 1900 words delving into what made Nixon both good and bad as a person and politican.
Stellar Work on Nixon and Watergate.......2004-08-16
To fully understand Nixon, I highly recommend first reading volumes 1 and 2 of Ambrose's work. If, however, you are more interested in the Watergate affair, this volume certainly stands on its own.
This is the final part of Ambrose's definitive three-volume biography of Nixon. The destructive tendencies wonderfully described by Ambrose in the first two volumes come to a head in Ruin & Recovery. Ambrose takes the reader through the unfolding of the mess that was Watergate.
Even though we all know the ultimate outcome will be resignation, the author manages to maintain enough tension and suspense to keep the reader engrossed. In the wake of resignation, Ambrose follows Nixon's remarkable comeback as an elder statesman.
If an affordable copy is not currently available, be patient. Because this book is out of print, it will be more expensive than you might expect, but you can find it for $20 to $30 if you look around.
Well balanced with the focus on Watergate.......2002-08-31
This third volume of the Nixon series is dominated by the Watergate scandal, with Ambrose skilfully detailing how the great election victory in 1972 slowly unravelled, as the full weight of the media and Democrat-controlled Congress worked to expose the whole tawdry episode. During this era, there was also the bombing of Hanoi followed by the Vietnam ceasefire, and summits with the Soviet leadership, but Watergate overshadowed all. Ambrose makes it clear that Nixon reinvented the story over and over, and bears a large burden of blame for the predicament he found himself in. He also makes clear that this was the opportunity for Nixon's arch enemies in the media and Congress to go for blood. The descent into the nightmare of possible impeachment and eventual resignation reads like an inevitablity, that Nixon lasted till August 1974 said a lot about his tenacity and stubborness in the face of relentless adversity.
The recovery of Nixon was never fully realized, although he was an authoritative elder statesman in later years, and Ambrose shows that Nixon had regained a fair amount of respect in his later years. Since his death the left has continued to disparage and villify his legacy, but as hard as it is to defend Nixon at times, he was still a statesman to be reckoned with, and his foreign policy record, especially with his China trip, is one of distinction. The eastern establishment despised Nixon, but he did not cater to them, it was the silent majority that was his constituency. One finishes this book wondering where America would have gone had the Watergate scandal not occurred.
A Nixon Finale.......2002-05-05
I enjoyed this concluding part of Stephen Ambrose's three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. This could have been the most difficult of the volumes to write - as the author needed to write in a way which maintained the reader's interest through the often tortuous intricacies of Watergate. I thought that the dangers (or challenges) were twofold: a reader's familiarity with the issues behind and history of Watergate could produce boredom, or the sheer complexity of the affair could bewilder the less well-informed reader.
I sat somewhere in the middle - I knew the broad issues (having read Woodward and Bernstein, and seen various TV documentaries) but being a non-American, my grasp of the relative roles and importance of the various US institutions involved and the politico-constitutional nuances was to say the least, tenuous. I think that Ambrose succeeded in both keeping my attention and guiding me through the whole affair: the book read at times like a political thriller, but with passages which guided me through the more complex issues. Whether or not this would bore politically aware Americans is not for me to judge.
The vast majority of this book is (rightly) devoted to Watergate. I thought that Ambrose made a good point, and one which is perhaps forgotten as the collective memory of the 1970s fades, that Watergate became such a tremendously irritating bore - people wanted rid of it because it was just so tedious, seeming to have been dominating the news forever, and producing a sclerosis in the body politic when major events of world importance needed to be addressed. Again, not being an American, I can't attest to the accuracy of Ambrose's point, but it seems to me to ring true.
The remainder of the book deals with Nixon's post-resignation reconstruction of himself, and one has to admire Nixon's sheer tenacity and willpower. At the end, Ambrose attemps an assessment of the man and his impact on America and the world. It's up the each reader to take his/her own view on that assessment, but in this cynical world when our trust in politicians seems to be ebbing ever further away, I thought that it's tempting to agree with Ambrose that Nixon's tragedy was that he got caught.
Watergate happened in a democracy!.......2002-03-26
Stephen Ambroses third Nixon Volume : "Ruin And
Recovery" takes on into the heart and soul
of democracy.
Cynics accustomed to political scandal might
be bemused by Watergate. What was all the
hullabaloo really all about?
Ambrose puts it something like this in the book:
To the british, with their official Secrets Act, nothing
that Nixon had done seemed that out of the ordinary,
much less illegal. The Italians simply threw up their hands
at the crazy Americans. To the French. Watergate
confirmed their suspicions about the naive Americans.
In west Germany, the frequent comparison of Nixon
to Hitler by his enemies in America showed either
how little the Americans understood Hitler,
or how little they understood Nixon, or both.
Nixons friends in China, could not understand
why he just didn't shoot his critics.
But in a democracy you must play by the law,
and you must trust and have faith in the wisdom
of the election process.
Watergate was all about how these things were
violated and how american democracy proved strong
enough to recover.
Ruin and Recovery reads like a detective story,
absolutely undeniable brilliant stuff.
Average customer rating:
- I am the next Nixon
- A spine-tingling summation of how Nixon's pathologies gripped the nation
- Intelligent and Judicious
- Nixon Called It!
- Fair, Thoughtful and Probing
|
Richard M. Nixon: The American Presidents Series: The 37th President, 1969-1974 (The American Presidents)
Elizabeth Drew
Manufacturer: Times Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 17th President, 1865-1869 (The American Presidents)
ASIN: 0805069631
Release Date: 2007-05-29 |
Book Description
The complex man at the center of America's most self-destructive presidency In this provocative and revelatory assessment of the only president ever forced out of office, the legendary Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew explains how Richard M. Nixon's troubled inner life offers the key to understanding his presidency. She shows how Nixon was surprisingly indecisive on domestic issues and often wasn't interested in them. Turning to international affairs, she reveals the inner workings of Nixon's complex relationship with Henry Kissinger, and their mutual rivalry and distrust. The Watergate scandal that ended his presidency was at once an overreach of executive power and the inevitable result of his paranoia and passion for vengeance. Even Nixon's post-presidential rehabilitation was motivated by a consuming desire for respectability, and he succeeded through his remarkable resilience. Through this book we finally understand this complicated man. While giving him credit for his achievements, Drew questions whether such a man-beleaguered, suspicious, and motivated by resentment and paranoia-was fit to hold America's highest office, and raises large doubts that he was.
Customer Reviews:
I am the next Nixon.......2007-07-25
My favorite president, by far. I loved this book and it has a special spot on my bookshelf, under my Nixon wall mural. I recommend this to anyone who wants to be successful in politics.
A spine-tingling summation of how Nixon's pathologies gripped the nation.......2007-07-20
This is the perfect "Richard Nixon" for folks who want to understand what made the man tick. It's also the perfect "RN" for folks who thought they knew. Drew draws on her own nonpareil reporting on Nixon and his times as well as on the prodigious amount that has been written about him since, and puts it all together in a gem of a 150-page book.
It's hard to imagine a better primer: See here where Nixon came from, what drove him, what his presidency was like, how Watergate arose, and how he fought back from it. Also here -- even more remarkably -- are correctives to the sort of societal plaque buildup of mindless repetitions that, over time, become the conventional wisdom about our presidents. From how Nixon approached those social-policy issues we now recall as enlightened to how he approached China, Drew shows us a much more complex (and interesting) truth.
Most compelling of all, though, is the spine-tingling exposition of the way this man's pathologies gripped the nation. Trust me -- even for those of us who lived through Watergate, reading about it here is a whole new (and mouth-droppingly disturbing) experience.
Drew has given us all a gift, an insightful (and chilling) look back that illuminates, in ways good and ways bad, where we are today, and how we got here.
Intelligent and Judicious.......2007-07-10
This is an unequalled short account of the life and career of Richard Nixon, evoking both the man and his times vividly and fairly. Elizabeth Drew knows as much about her subject as any living observer --- her New Yorker pieces covering the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings were the most illuminating contemporary reportage --- and she remains a clear-eyed chronicler, impervious both to the rabid Nixon hatred felt by many, and to the recent revisionist tendency to mitigate the man's considerable crimes. Instead, she sees and presents the man whole. It is not a flattering portrait she provides, but then, a flattering portrait would be, perforce, a distorted one.
Nixon Called It!.......2007-07-08
Shortly before his death in 1994, Richard Nixon was asked how he thought history would remember him. "It depends who writes the history" was the reply that our 37th President gave and this book reflects that prediction.
Hopefully, people will not rely on this 151 page volume to provide a definitive account of Nixon's life and works. Drew made her bias known throughout, particularly linking Nixon to racism. Though she did give him credit for a number of foreign (openings to China and Russia and an end to American involvement in Vietnam)and domestic(OSHA, EPA, revenue sharing)
initiatives, the book was hardly balanced. I am glad that three other reviewers thus far have noted the same lack of objectivity.
Fair, Thoughtful and Probing.......2007-07-05
Elizabeth Drew combines her skill as a premier journalist with the touch of a careful historian in her Richard M. Nixon. This short biography is fair, thoughtful and probing. It is part of the American President's series. Having read many of these biographies, for me she tops the field in this valuable series.
Drew's highest standards of journalism means that she digs into and analyzes the public record. She combines that record with a detailed knowledge of Nixon the person. Drew recognizes Nixon's complexity and she thrives in it. The result is a knowing and fair book that provides readers with fresh insights into Nixon the politician, the man and the President.
Drew will anger liberals because she recognizes Nixon's boldness in his opening to China and the importance of negotiating arms control agreements with the then Soviet Union. He could initiate and produce what liberals could not. She recognizes his political abilities with his domestic accomplishments but gets beyond the policy results to show Nixon's patterns of cynicism. That cynicism manifested itself in Vietnam as well, extending the war at the cost of an added 30,000 American lives lost.
As Drew reported over 30 years ago on Watergate, she stands as the best digger and interpreter at unraveling that scandalous abuse of power. She captures the fear and tension the American people lived through in that troubled time.
The late Arthur Schlesinger, the series editor, rightly wrote that "the President is the central player in the American political order." Drew demonstrates an uncanny ability to undertsand the institution of the Presidency, our other governing institutions and Nixon's creative and destructive interactions with them.
In Drew's writing she never falls prey to cynicism or sentimentality. That makes her contribution in writing Richard M. Nixon a lasting one.
Average customer rating:
- The Hobo Philosopher
- Inside of the White House
- The effect the Independent Counsel had on the Presidency
- Interesting, disturbing look at the presidency
- An important bridging of common sense psychology & politics
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Shadow : Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate
Bob Woodward
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House
ASIN: 0684852624
Release Date: 1999-06-15 |
Amazon.com
There are two ways to look at this bestseller by Watergate scoopmeister Woodward. First, it's an original take on Clinton's sex scandal, framing it as the latest consequence of Nixon's assault on the U.S. political system. Woodward sketches each president's tussles with scandal managing after Watergate permanently turned up the press heat on the White House. Ford lies about a meeting concerning a potential deal to pardon Nixon, but remains convinced he did nothing wrong. Carter's pious advocacy of truth telling backfires when he's confronted with conundrums involving his pal Bert Lance, the fallout from CIA-provided hookers, and cash for King Hussein. Reagan's men try to make him understand the lies and shocking wrongness of the Iran-Contra debacle, but he simply, stubbornly doesn't get it. And by the time prosecutors interview Reagan in 1992, he's so ill he can't remember his own oldest friends and advisers.
All provocative stuff, some of it new. But most readers will flip to the book's second half, a fly-on-the-wall account of the backroom mud-wrestling in both the Clinton and Starr camps in the Monicagate morass. It's a trove of racy facts (mostly from anonymous sources). We read that Clinton called Nixon a "war criminal," yet tried to minimize Watergate in his Nixon eulogy, that he disgusted Ford and Jack Nicklaus by cheating while golfing with them, and that he kept falsely assuring aides, "I'm retired! [as an adulterer]." We hear Hillary's alleged words of agony and see the pain on Bill's face after Chelsea reads The Starr Report on the Internet. Starr comes off like RoboCop without the human side. Woodward calls him "pathetic and unwise" in rejecting his staff's urgent demand not to send the lurid details of presidential sex to Congress. "I love the narrative!" Starr weirdly exulted, according to Woodward's new Deep Throat (or Throats). Since Monica was interrogated at Starr's mother-in-law's apartment, which he called "Grandma's place," ethics expert Sam Dash suggested they call it "Operation Red Riding Hood." What sharp teeth everyone in this book has!
To tell the truth, Woodward doesn't really knit together 25 years' worth of scandals into a single strong narrative. But the Clinton part is the closest thing yet to what we all crave: a tale of Monicagate with some of the flavor of a John Grisham thriller. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
Twenty-five years ago, after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Gerald Ford promised a return to normalcy. "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," President Ford declared.
But it was not. The Watergate scandal, and the remedies against future abuses of power, would have an enduring impact on presidents and the country. In Shadow, Bob Woodward takes us deep into the administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton to describe how each discovered that the presidency was forever altered. With special emphasis on the human toll, Woodward shows the consequences of the new ethics laws, and the emboldened Congress and media. Powerful investigations increasingly stripped away the privacy and protections once expected by the nation's chief executive.
Using presidential documents, diaries, prosecutorial records and hundreds of interviews with firsthand witnesses, Woodward chronicles how all five men failed first to understand and then to manage the inquisitorial environment.
"The mood was mean," Gerald Ford says. Woodward explains how Ford believed he had been offered a deal to pardon Nixon, then clumsily rejected it and later withheld all the details from Congress and the public, leaving lasting suspicions that compromised his years in the White House.
Jimmy Carter used Watergate to win an election, and then watched in bewilderment as the rules of strict accountability engulfed his budget director, Bert Lance, and challenged his own credibility. From his public pronouncements to the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter never found the decisive, healing style of leadership the first elected post-Watergate president had promised.
Woodward also provides the first behind-the-scenes account of how President Reagan and a special team of more than 60 attorneys and archivists beat Iran-contra. They turned the Reagan White House and United States intelligence agencies upside down investigating the president with orders to disclose any incriminating information they found. A fresh portrait of an engaged Reagan emerges as he realizes his presidency is in peril and attempts to prove his innocence.
In Shadow, a bitter and disoriented President Bush routinely pours out his anger at the permanent scandal culture to his personal diary as a dozen investigations touch some of those closest to him. At one point, Bush pounds a plastic mallet on his Oval Office desk because of the continuing investigation of Iran-contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. "Take that, Walsh!" he shouts. "I'd like to get rid of this guy." Woodward also reveals why Bush avoided telling one of the remaining secrets of the Gulf War.
The second half of Shadow focuses on President Clinton's scandals. Woodward shows how and why Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation became a state of permanent war with the Clintons. He reveals who Clinton really feared in the Paula Jones case, and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and ruthless, cynical legal strategies to protect the Clintons. Shadow also describes how impeachment affected Clinton's war decisions and scarred his life, his marriage and his presidency. "How can I go on?" First Lady Hillary Clinton asked in 1996, when she was under scrutiny by Starr and the media, two years before the Lewinsky scandal broke. "How can I?"
Shadow is an authoritative, unsettling narrative of the modern, beleaguered presidency.
Download Description
Twenty-five years after Nixon's resignation, the reporter who helped break the story explains how Watergate--the premier scandal of our time--has indelibly altered American politics, culture, and the presidency.
Customer Reviews:
The Hobo Philosopher.......2007-10-19
Well, I read a few books by Woodward. I haven't been that impressed by any of them. After I finished this one, I closed the door on Bob Woodward.
First of all I don't like the fiction type format for a history book. I realize that he and his staff of junior writers are trying to make it interesting and more enjoyable, but when they write things like: Judge So and So thought to himself, what a complete jerk this guy is. That's going too far for me. That's fiction not history.
Next, I think this accounting was rather ridiculous. This book makes Jimmy Carter out to be a foul mouthed, conniving manipulator of people and the poor press; on the other hand Gerald Ford comes off as a ex-altar boy with only the purest apolitical motivations. Come on!
I struggled and struggled to finish reading this book, but that's the last one by Woodward and friends for me.
I've read a couple by Bernstein. I think Mr. Bernstein was the real thing in this duo. This Woodward is a joke.
Inside of the White House.......2005-06-15
Another Bob Woodward book, another masterpiece. I am getting great pleasure from his books. Detailed research, witnesses, and main character interviews are combined to revealed truth with every respect. In Shadows, he discovers the last five presidents scandals and events around them. Book starts with Ford, Nixon and Watergate, This is the most interesting chapter of the book, and it is explained with every detail. Secondly, Carter and payment made to Jordan King and Iran Hostage crisis. You can feel Carter's pain in this chapter. After that, of course Reagan and Iran-Contra weapon sale and Oliver North incident. This chapter is also very interesting. The role Regan and Senior Bush is much different than public knows. Senior Bush's role is very controversial. There are always something learn from his books. When Senior Bush was at the White House, subject is the war again. First gulf war and Saddam stories given. There is also little bit information about Bush-Saudi relations in that time. Inevitable, Mr. Bandar's name is also here. Finally, Clinton era, Whitewater and Monica. This is also very big chapter. In Whitewater investigation is explained very well. Also Monica scandal is the fun part of the book. Star and Clinton have not a bad relation as we know.
This is the best book for near presidential history. I give all the credits to Mr. Woodward for this great book. Buy it and read it!
The effect the Independent Counsel had on the Presidency.......2003-12-26
I think this is a pretty good book on the Presidency of the United States since Watergate. Of course, Mr. Woodward played a significant role in reporting Watergate and has written extensively about the Presidency since then.
This book examines the various difficulties and scandals the Presidents since Nixon have had and the shadow the legacy of Watergate fell on those events and affected how they were handled and perceived. The most significant event in the way these things played out was the creation of the Independent Counsel. While I was never wild about the Independent Counsels before I read this book, I have come to the conclusion that it was an awful idea and an abuse of our Constitution. While the office was designed to not be accountable to the President to afford a credible ability to investigate the Executive Branch, it has no reasonable boundaries or limits and is not subject to any of the checks or balances that enable our government to function as reasonably as it does.
Freed from any limits of time, budget, or public accountability it is not surprising that many, but not all, of these Independent Counsels end up pursuing all kinds of things apart from what they were originally charged to pursue. My chief conclusion from reading this book is that this was a bad law with worse execution and should never be revived. Good riddance!
Half of the book is devoted to the Clinton scandals. The other large section is Iran-Contra. How you perceive Woodward's balance and objectivity will be colored by your personal politics. I have to admit that I found my own reading of the book varied at different points because of my own view of these scandals and whether or not I agreed with Woodward or felt that his own political biases were creeping in (which is impossible to avoid). But all-in-all there is a lot of good reporting here and is written in way that is easy to read. There are lots of endnotes to document the sources for the various statements, meetings, and conclusions drawn.
I recommend the book highly.
Interesting, disturbing look at the presidency.......2003-02-03
Heard the taped version of SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS
AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE by Bob Woodward . . . it
is a very interesting, as well as disturbing, look at what it takes to be president in this country.
Because of Watergate, the press no longer takes a "hands off"
approach to what is being done in the White House . . . consequently, Woodward points out that all presidents--from Nixon through Clinton--seem to have had lapses in judgment, during which they either did not tell the truth or had others help cover it up for them.
I got a fresh perspective on Ford's pardon of Nixon, and though
I had thought I had known a lot about the Monicagate morass,
I now know even more (including a lot of dirt not uncovered
elsewhere).
Fortunately, Woodward is only heard at the beginning and
the end . . . he does not have a great speaking voice, that's
for sure . . . the rest was narrated by James Naughton . . . his
impressive baritone voice made for easy listening . . . moreover, he actually sounds like many of the characters he portrays, such as James Carville, Ronald Raegan and Jimmy Carter.
An important bridging of common sense psychology & politics.......2003-01-18
The first line in Micahel Lind's deeply provocative treatise on the modern American conservative movement UP FROM CONSERVATISM kicks you in the stomach, regardless of your political beliefs:"American Conservatism is dead." Like the political Nietzsche he is, Bob Woodward, in SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE, finishes that statement in this 500-plus page tome by saying, essentially, "...and Nixon has killed it."
None other than Gore Vidal has nicknamed America the *United States of Amnesia* so often that the trueness of it stops it from being funny. Yet any psychologist worth their salt will tell you the many reasons why memory, in a person or culture, is often the first thing to be EXORCISED. It isn't always something that leaves willingly. Bob Woodward brings common sense psychology--memory--back into the discussion of what has happened to the presidency, and America's relationship to it, since the quasi-psychotic Nixon disgraced it in the early 1970's. He reveals this with SHADOW, not by calling out and judging the Nixonians from the perspective of opinion, but via showing and analysing actual history. The degree to which the entire concept and institution of the American Presidency has been almost irrevocably debilitated by Watergate is the subject of this book, and it cannot be ignored in our time after reading it. In revealing the new cynically invasive psychic architecture of American politics, built on the destroyed remnants of the trusted Tao of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Kennedy, he offers a glimpse of what Watergate symbolized about Nixon's soul. And what that tortured soul has meant for American culture today, in the 21st century.
Doing this not only puts Monica Lewinsky into a less mythological perspective. It also puts all of the machinations that now go into politicking for your right to actually BE President long after you have been elected--Republican or Democrat--into a new, important, and ultimately saddening perspective. (The degree to which her very existence in the public mind is shown to be part of a desire of Clinton's powerful enemies to erase Nixon's legacy from the annals of history with the impeachment of a Democratic President is brilliant. That omen is ironically overshadowed, however, by the way he explains the uncontrollable political Frankenstein that was the Office of Independent Counsel. This evil genie, with its granted near absolute power, is what Clinton let out of the bottle; a bottle that, after Watergate, was thought never to be opened again. Without it, the reincarnation of the Salem witch trials with Kenneth Starr and the pornography of his reports would never have occurred.)
I happened to have picked up this book to read after reading Conason and Lyons' THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT--something which truly must be read in tandem with this if one is to really understand the social forces that also took center stage in the Clinton drama, despite their desire to still remain hidden. As such I found the Clinton chapters of SHADOW a rehash of previously digested material. SHADOW nonetheless, with its detailed meticulous analyses of the weaknesses and foibles of Ford, Carter, Regan, Bush and Clinton, and how these weaknesses became debilitating through the sins of their Watergate predecessor Nixon, cuts to the quick of our social consciousness today.
It is so important, it seems, for the American public not to have a historical perspective on anything that happens in politics. As if the pretense that all of it has no precedence somehow makes it more real or important--or worse, justifies an often hypocritically manufactured moral outrage. (I'll never forget the rage Clinton-haters would express at the mere mentioning of Sally Hemmings [Thomas Jefferson's slave mistress], Judith Exner [one of Kennedy's mistresses] or the broken first marriages of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, seemingly defending their right to believe Bill and Monica had ushered in the seventh sign of the Book of Revelations with their original sin.) Woodward's SHADOW destroys any validity that way of thinking had, and redefines the desire to be willfully politically/historically ignorant (as if ignorance buys someone moral virtue) as anything but sane. The book has a way of revalidating the entire concept and discipline of psychology, and its ability to explain the source of today's events, as it gives new strength to the battle weary line of Santayana: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Anyone interested in a deeper perspective on the Clinton presidency, the presidency of both Bushes, and modern American culture would highly benefit from this powerful trinity: Michael Lind's UP FROM CONSERVATISM, Conason and Lyons' THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, and this book. Woodward's SHADOW is extraordinarily well written, tremendously informative, and, even with its inevitable biases both in favor of journalism as it is presently practiced (Consaon and Lyons are fortunately not so kind--particularly to the Washington Post) and against the possibility of a president after Nixon inspiring the kind of faith and hope that those like FDR and Kennedy did (though he is almost right, Conason, Lyons and Lind will explain clearly why it could have happened but would not be allowed in Clinton's case), Woodward's masterful writing and storytelling skills hide a multitude of sins. Highly recommended.
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- Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson
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- Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time
- Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel
- Staying Healthy With Nutrition, 21st Century Edition: The Complete Guide to Diet & Nutritional Medicine
Books Index
Books Home
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President Nixon: Alone in the White House
Arrogance of Power, The : The Secret World of Richard Nixon
Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford
Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962`
