From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, Richard Nixon was a polarizing figure in American politics, admired for his intelligence, savvy, and strategic skill, and reviled for his shady manner and cutthroat tactics. Conrad Black, whose epic biography of FDR was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, now separates the good in Nixon—his foreign initiatives, some of his domestic policies, and his firm political hand—from the sinister, in a book likely to generate enormous attention and controversy. Black believes the hounding of Nixon from office was partly political retribution from a lifetime's worth of enemies and Nixon's misplaced loyalty to unworthy subordinates, and not clearly the consequence of crimes in which he participated. Conrad Black's own recent legal travails, though hardly comparable, have undoubtedly given him an unusual insight into the pressures faced by Nixon in his last two years as president and the first few years of his retirement.

Chronicles Nixon's rise to political prominence, from his pre-World War II government service to his under-the-table stab at the vice-presidency in 1952, in the first of a projected three-volume biography

Presents a biography of the only United States President to resign, including his early years, the Vietnam War, and his participation in Watergate.

PRESIDENT NIXON shows a man alone in a White House ruled by secrets and lies, trying to impose old values at home and new balances of power everywhere in the world. Reeves proves that the Watergate scandal was no abberation in an administration foreshadowed by a series of successful uses of 'national security' to cover coups, burglaries, lies, the abandonment of America's allies - and even murder. Reeves portrays a man of vision and iron will who created, used and was used by a small cast of hard, ambitious men who formed a poisonous circle around their insecure leader. Alone, Nixon challenged and changed the world's political and military balance while also plotting to destroy both the Democratic and Republican parties in an attempt to create secretly a new party of the centre. This account of Nixon's stewardship will stand as the balanced, authoratative portrait of an astonishng president and his ruined presidency.

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.

From a prize-winning biographer comes the defining portrait of a man who led America in a time of turmoil and left us a darker age. We live today, John A. Farrell shows, in a world Richard Nixon made. At the end of WWII, navy lieutenant “Nick” Nixon returned from the Pacific and set his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon’s finer attributes gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. The story of that transformation is the stunning overture to John A. Farrell’s magisterial biography of the president who came to embody postwar American resentment and division. Within four years of his first victory, Nixon was a U.S. senator; in six, the vice president of the United States of America. “Few came so far, so fast, and so alone,” Farrell writes. Nixon’s sins as a candidate were legion; and in one unlawful secret plot, as Farrell reveals here, Nixon acted to prolong the Vietnam War for his own political purposes. Finally elected president in 1969, Nixon packed his staff with bright young men who devised forward-thinking reforms addressing health care, welfare, civil rights, and protection of the environment. It was a fine legacy, but Nixon cared little for it. He aspired to make his mark on the world stage instead, and his 1972 opening to China was the first great crack in the Cold War. Nixon had another legacy, too: an America divided and polarized. He was elected to end the war in Vietnam, but his bombing of Cambodia and Laos enraged the antiwar movement. It was Nixon who launched the McCarthy era, who played white against black with a “southern strategy,” and spurred the Silent Majority to despise and distrust the country’s elites. Ever insecure and increasingly paranoid, he persuaded Americans to gnaw, as he did, on grievances—and to look at one another as enemies. Finally, in August 1974, after two years of the mesmerizing intrigue and scandal of Watergate, Nixon became the only president to resign in disgrace. Richard Nixon is a gripping and unsparing portrayal of our darkest president. Meticulously researched, brilliantly crafted, and offering fresh revelations, it will be hailed as a master work.

When Nikita Khrushchev shouted contempt for the United States in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Vice President Richard Nixon, Americans gasped at the sudden glimpse of the Soviet leader's character. At the time cameras and reporters were present. But how much more would we have learned if we could have traveled the globe with Richard Nixon and met privately with others who have shaped the modern world? Richard Nixon knew virtually every major foreign leader since World War II—some at the pinnacle of power, some during their “years in the wilderness” out of power, and still others toward the end of their lives. His was an unparalleled opportunity to gain insight into the nature of the powerful and qualities of leadership. In Leaders, Nixon shares these insights and experiences. He illustrates these leaders in private, assesses their careers, recalls words of wisdom, and brings to bear his own judgments. We meet the co-architects of the New Japan, Douglas MacArthur and Shigeru Yoshida. Encountering the legendary leaders of China—Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Chiang Kai-shek—we see the men behind the events. We see the intensely private Charles DeGaulle; explore the philosophies of Konraud Adenauer; confront Leonid Brezhnev; and delight in the company of Winston Churchill—not to mention Nixon’s analyses of interactions with dozens of other leaders. No one but Richard Nixon could have written this book. It is at once as personal as a handclasp and as objective as only so earnest a student of history could have made it.