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Book Being Nixon

Download or read book Being Nixon written by Evan Thomas and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark New York Times bestselling biography of Richard M. Nixon, a political savant whose gaping character flaws would drive him from the presidency and forever taint his legacy. “A biography of eloquence and breadth . . . No single volume about Nixon’s long and interesting life could be so comprehensive.”—Chicago Tribune One of Time’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the Year In this revelatory biography, Evan Thomas delivers a radical, unique portrait of America’s thirty-seventh president, Richard Nixon, a contradictory figure who was both determinedly optimistic and tragically flawed. One of the principal architects of the modern Republican Party and its “silent majority” of disaffected whites and conservative ex-Dixiecrats, Nixon was also deemed a liberal in some quarters for his efforts to desegregate Southern schools, create the Environmental Protection Agency, and end the draft. The son of devout Quakers, Richard Nixon (not unlike his rival John F. Kennedy) grew up in the shadow of an older, favored brother and thrived on conflict and opposition. Through high school and college, in the navy and in politics, Nixon was constantly leading crusades and fighting off enemies real and imagined. He possessed the plainspoken eloquence to reduce American television audiences to tears with his career-saving “Checkers” speech; meanwhile, Nixon’s darker half hatched schemes designed to take down his political foes, earning him the notorious nickname “Tricky Dick.” Drawing on a wide range of historical accounts, Thomas’s biography reveals the contradictions of a leader whose vision and foresight led him to achieve détente with the Soviet Union and reestablish relations with communist China, but whose underhanded political tactics tainted his reputation long before the Watergate scandal. A deeply insightful character study as well as a brilliant political biography, Being Nixon offers a surprising look at a man capable of great bravery and extraordinary deviousness—a balanced portrait of a president too often reduced to caricature. Praise for Being Nixon “Terrifically engaging . . . a fair, insightful and highly entertaining portrait.”—The Wall Street Journal “Thomas has a fine eye for the telling quote and the funny vignette, and his style is eminently readable.”—The New York Times Book Review

Book Nixon s Business

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nigel Bowles
  • Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
  • Release : 2005-10-04
  • ISBN : 1585444545
  • Pages : 316 pages

Download or read book Nixon s Business written by Nigel Bowles and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-04 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Nixon considered establishing a strong peacetime economy one of his most important political objectives, [not least for] distinguishing himself from the cautious policies of President Dwight Eisenhower. Using Richard Neustadt’s analytical framework of presidential power, Nigel Bowles develops five case studies around President Nixon’s economic policies. The thoughtful, insightful analysis goes far to help us understand the sources of Richard Nixon’s authority and power, and his use of both. For each of the “issue-stories” (as Bowles terms them), he considers the president’s bargaining advantages: his authority (constitutional and statutory), popular prestige, and personal qualities. He then answers Neustadt’s twin questions: “What was the president’s inheritance?” and “What was his legacy?” Bowles’s chosen cases represent fiscal policy, wage and price policy, international monetary policy, and domestic monetary policy. Through these analyses, Bowles offers new perspectives on Nixon’s use of authority and power; his dealings with and views of senior politicians and power-brokers; his ruthlessness and political ingenuity; the ways his experiences as congressman, senator, and vice president shaped his approach to the presidency; and his subordination of other objectives to his drive for re-election in 1972. He concludes that Nixon used the limited authority he had under the separation of powers to the fullest degree, often thereby augmenting his power in the short-term, but undermining it in the longer-term. Nixon’s Business is the first book to make systematic use of Neustadt’s crucial framework in understanding a specific presidency; the first to analyze empirically the components of Nixon’s authority and power; and the first to demonstrate the implications of both for understanding the institution of the United States presidency.

Book Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War

Download or read book Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War written by David F. Schmitz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon’s Vietnam policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon’s first presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of “containment,” protect America’s credibility, and defy the left’s antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon’s moves made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations. Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon’s Vietnam strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place the impact of Nixon’s policies and decisions in the larger context of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.

Book One Man Against the World

Download or read book One Man Against the World written by Tim Weiner and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-06-16 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Bestseller A shocking and riveting look at one of the most dramatic and disastrous presidencies in US history, from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Tim Weiner Based largely on documents declassified only in the last few years, One Man Against the World paints a devastating portrait of a tortured yet brilliant man who led the country largely according to a deep-seated insecurity and distrust of not only his cabinet and congress, but the American population at large. In riveting, tick-tock prose, Weiner illuminates how the Vietnam War and the Watergate controversy that brought about Nixon's demise were inextricably linked. From the hail of garbage and curses that awaited Nixon upon his arrival at the White House, when he became the president of a nation as deeply divided as it had been since the end of the Civil War, to the unprecedented action Nixon took against American citizens, who he considered as traitorous as the army of North Vietnam, to the infamous break-in and the tapes that bear remarkable record of the most intimate and damning conversations between the president and his confidantes, Weiner narrates the history of Nixon's anguished presidency in fascinating and fresh detail. A crucial new look at the greatest political suicide in history, One Man Against the World leaves us not only with new insight into this tumultuous period, but also into the motivations and demons of an American president who saw enemies everywhere, and, thinking the world was against him, undermined the foundations of the country he had hoped to lead.

Book Absolute Friends

    Book Details:
  • Author : John le Carré
  • Publisher : Little, Brown
  • Release : 2004-01-12
  • ISBN : 0759508690
  • Pages : 324 pages

Download or read book Absolute Friends written by John le Carré and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2004-01-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, Mundy is a down-at-the-heels tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served. And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of an old German student friend, radical, and onetime fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict. After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life-this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they? Who is Dimitri? Why does Dimitri's gold pour in from mysterious Middle Eastern bank accounts? And why does his apparently noble venture reek less of starry idealism than of treachery and fear? Some gifts are too expensive to accept. Could this be one of them? With a cooler head than Sasha's, Mundy is inclined to think it could. In Absolute Friends, John le Carre delivers the masterpiece he has been building to since the fall of communism: an epic tale of loyalty and betrayal that spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances. This is the novel le Carre fans have been waiting for, a brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.

Book After the Fall

Download or read book After the Fall written by Kasey S. Pipes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Main Selection of the History Book Club! The Astonishing Comeback of Richard Nixon On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first and only U.S. president to resign from office—to avoid almost certain impeachment. Utterly disgraced, he was forced to flee the White House with a small cadre of advisors and family. Richard Nixon was a completely defeated man. Yet only a decade later, Nixon was a trusted advisor to presidents, dispensing wisdom on campaign strategy and foreign policy, shaping the course of U.S.-Soviet summit meetings, and representing the U.S. at state funerals—the very model of an elder statesman. How did he do it? Nixon leveraged his still sharp mind, his peerless political instincts, his deep connections with foreign leaders—but, above all, his stubborn refusal to accept defeat—to achieve a political restoration as astonishing as the fall that preceded it. Kasey S. Pipes, advisor to President George W. Bush, tells the fascinating story of Nixon’s comeback. Using unprecedented access to the private post-presidential documents at the Nixon Library, Pipes reveals inside information that has never been reported about Nixon’s successful campaign to repair his reputation and resuscitate his career, including: The true story behind the supposed medical “hoax” to get Nixon out of testifying at the Watergate trials of his aides in Washington The strategy behind Nixon’s apparently accidental on-air “confession” of the Watergate coverup to interviewer David Frost How Nixon’s advice on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) shaped Ronald Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev—and changed history How Nixon traveled to China after Tiananmen Square to help preserve the U.S.-Chinese relations that he had opened up years earlier The Saturday morning presidential radio address: a Nixon idea Nixon’s surprising friendship with Bill Clinton After the Fall is the gripping and never-before-told story of one of the most remarkable reversals of fortune in American political history.

Book Powerful and Brutal Weapons

    Book Details:
  • Author : Stephen P Randolph
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2009-06-30
  • ISBN : 0674027094
  • Pages : 415 pages

Download or read book Powerful and Brutal Weapons written by Stephen P Randolph and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As America confronts an unpredictable war in Iraq, Randolph returns to an earlier conflict that severely tested our civilian and military leaders. In 1972, America sought to withdraw from Vietnam with its credibility intact, with President Nixon and National Security Advisor Kissinger hoping that gains on the battlefield would strengthen their position at the negotiating table. Randolph's intimate chronicle of the commander-in-chief gains us unprecedented access to how these strategic assessments were made and played out.

Book Debriefing the President

Download or read book Debriefing the President written by John Nixon (Middle East expert) and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first man to conduct a prolonged interrogation of Saddam Hussein after his capture explains why preconceived ideas about the dictator led Washington policymakers and the Bush White House astray.

Book They Said No to Nixon

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Koncewicz
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2020-09-15
  • ISBN : 0520377486
  • Pages : 236 pages

Download or read book They Said No to Nixon written by Michael Koncewicz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In more than 3,000 recorded conversations, the Nixon tapes famously exposed a president's sinister views of governance that would eventually lead to his downfall. Despite Richard Nixon's best efforts, his vision of a government where he could use his power to punish his political enemies never came to fruition because there were those in his party who defied the president's directives. While many are familiar with the Republicans who turned against Nixon during the final stages of the Watergate saga, They Said No to Nixon uncovers for the first time those within the administration--including Nixon's own appointees--who opposed the White House early on, quietly blocking the president's attacks on the IRS, the Justice Department, and other sectors of the federal government. Culling from previously unpublished excerpts from the tapes and recently released material that expose the thirty-seventh president's uncensored views, Michael Koncewicz reveals how several Republican party members chose loyalty to their roles as civil servants over Nixon's attempts to expand the imperial presidency. Delving into the culture of criminality surrounding Watergate and why it did not succeed, They Said No to Nixon sheds light on the significant cultural and ideological shifts that occurred within the GOP during the pivotal 1970s. To this day, the Nixon tapes are a bracing reminder of the threat to constitutional order posed by a president who wields power without restraint"--Provided by publisher.

Book The Presidency of Gerald R  Ford

Download or read book The Presidency of Gerald R Ford written by John Robert Greene and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting from start to finish". -- Herbert S. Parmet, author of Richard Nixon and His America.

Book Nixon s Nuclear Specter

    Book Details:
  • Author : William Burr
  • Publisher : University Press of Kansas
  • Release : 2015-06-15
  • ISBN : 0700620826
  • Pages : 472 pages

Download or read book Nixon s Nuclear Specter written by William Burr and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their initial effort to end the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to lever concessions from Hanoi at the negotiating table with military force and coercive diplomacy. They were not seeking military victory, which they did not believe was feasible. Instead, they backed up their diplomacy toward North Vietnam and the Soviet Union with the Madman Theory of threatening excessive force, which included the specter of nuclear force. They began with verbal threats then bombed North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base areas in Cambodia, signaling that there was more to come. As the bombing expanded, they launched a previously unknown mining ruse against Haiphong, stepped-up their warnings to Hanoi and Moscow, and initiated planning for a massive shock-and-awe military operation referred to within the White House inner circle as DUCK HOOK. Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for “tactical” nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi's defiance in the face of his dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent. In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a “special reminder” of how far President Nixon might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration's strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a “long-route” policy of providing Saigon with a “decent chance” of survival for a “decent interval” after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina. Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to unravel this intricate story of the October 1969 nuclear alert. They place it in the context of nuclear threat making and coercive diplomacy since 1945, the culture of the Bomb, intra-governmental dissent, domestic political pressures, the international “nuclear taboo,” and Vietnamese and Soviet actions and policies. It is a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.

Book Worse Than Watergate

Download or read book Worse Than Watergate written by John W. Dean and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2004-04-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former White House counsel and bestselling author John Dean reveals how the Bush White House has set America back decades -- employing a worldview and tactics of deception that he claims will do more damage to the nation than Nixon at his worst.

Book Watergate

    Book Details:
  • Author : Fred Emery
  • Publisher : Crown
  • Release : 2012-11-21
  • ISBN : 0307824748
  • Pages : 746 pages

Download or read book Watergate written by Fred Emery and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-11-21 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the definitive history of the Watergate scandal—based on the most recently released tapes, in-depth interviews with many of the participants, and hundreds of official and unofficial documents, including notes Haldeman omitted from his own published diaries. Emery's comprehensive coverage and penetrating insights clear up many uncertainties that may still remain about the scandal and the extent of Nixon's involvement. Authoritative and compelling, Watergate is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand fully this traumatizing episode in America's history that challenged the integrity of its political system.

Book The Nixon Tapes  1971 1972

Download or read book The Nixon Tapes 1971 1972 written by Douglas Brinkley and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 797 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The infamous Nixon White House taping system captured 3,700 hours of Oval Office, Cabinet Room, and Camp David conversations between 1971 and 1973, automatically taping every single word spoken. These audio recordings have finally been released over the past decade by the National Archives, yet only fewer than 5% of them have been transcribed and published--until now.

Book Reagan s Path to Victory

Download or read book Reagan s Path to Victory written by Kiron K. Skinner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last years of Ronald Reagan's life, his voluminous writings on politics, policy, and people finally emerged and offered a Rosetta stone by which to understand him. From 1975 to 1979, in particular, he delivered more than 1,000 radio addresses, of which he wrote at least 680 himself. When drafts of his addresses were first discovered, and a selection was published in 2001 as Reagan, In His Own Hand by the editors of this book, they caused a sensation by revealing Reagan as a prolific and thoughtful writer, who covered a wide variety of topics and worked out the agenda that would drive his presidency. What was missed in that thematic collection, however, was the development of his ideas over time. Now, in Reagan's Path to Victory, a chronological selection of more than 300 addresses with historical context supplied by the editors, readers can see how Reagan reacted to the events that defined the Carter years and how he honed his message in the crucial years before his campaign officially began. The late 1970s were tumultuous times. In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, America's foreign and domestic policies were up for grabs. Reagan argued against the Panama Canal treaties, in vain; against the prevailing view that the Vietnam War was an ignoble enterprise from the start; against détente with the Soviet Union; against the growth of regulation; and against the tax burden. Yet he was fundamentally an optimist, who presented positive, values-based prescriptions for the economy and for Soviet relations. He told many inspiring stories; he applauded charities and small businesses that worked to overcome challenges. As Reagan's Path to Victory unfolds, Reagan's essays reveal a presidential candidate who knew himself and knew his positions, who presented a stark alternative to an incumbent administration, and who knew how to reach out and touch voters directly. Reagan's Path to Victory is nothing less than a president's campaign playbook, in his own words.