Book Description

It's time to revisit Watergate. In this compelling reexamination, Liebovich draws extensively from newly available sources, including recently released Nixon Oval Office tapes, FBI reports, and personal reminiscences of cover-up leader John Dean. Liebovich sheds new light on the Nixon administration's extensive foul play, zeal to battle and manipulate the press, scandalous miring, and eventual political disgrace. ... Read more

Amazon.com

When Friedrich Nietzsche first met Richard Wagner in 1869, the magisterial composer was more than twice the age of the fledgling philologist. Wagner had also just been banished from the royal court of Bavaria for his adulterous affair with Cosima von Bülow. Although the friendship between the two men began rather well, it would famously degenerate into a bitter intellectual and emotional feud, over which Nietzsche would continue to obsess even after Wagner's death in 1883 (but then, Cosima--who'd married Wagner as soon as possible after her divorce--was more than happy to keep up her late husband's end of the battle, and Nietzsche's own death in 1900 did nothing to change that).

Joachim Köhler's densely compact Nietzsche and Wagner draws heavily upon available correspondence from all parties--and Nietzsche's early writings--to examine this turbulent relationship. The point is not so much that Wagner was a manipulative jerk (although he certainly was that) or that Nietzsche and Cosima, who both suffered miserably in youth, were psychologically vulnerable to Wagner's seductive but emotionally abusive behavior; rather, the idea seems to be an examination of the effects of the relationship on the philosopher's thinking, both before and after their breakup. It's an academically rigorous account, so while it is fraught with traces of melodrama, they are buried under careful analytic prose, making this book far more suitable for scholars than general readers interested in biographical data on any of the principals involved. --Ron Hogan ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Ecce Homo(cough, you know what).
A great sage once said, "All history's a lie" and this book only further enhances that point. Which is why I am recommending it.

Kohler not only contends that Nietzsche was a homosexual, but an uber-sissy who was lowered to menial tasks of propaganda and undershorts buying for the heavy-handed Master Wagner. Drawing largely from the diaries and personal correspondence of three megalomaniacs, which we know are highly accurate accounts of objective reality and history, Kohler paints a picture of a menage a trois of ascetic bondage: Nietzsche to Cosima and the Maestro, Cosima to the Master, and Wagner himself to the libidinous gods of hedonism. To top this off, the Dionysian Nietzsche in his final stages of dementia and mustachio maximus, calls out to Cosima, his spiritual Ariadne and soul-bride to come save his tottering soul from the labryrinth of the Wagnerian oppression that continued even after their reknowned split. Thus proclaiming, "C-o-s-i-m-a, you are the only MAN for me." Well Kohler didn't say that, but in saying that Wagner was "a woman" in Nietzsche's eyes and that Nietzsche himself, the constant companion of man-worshippers and man-worship was feminine in affection and mannerisms towards his friendths[sic], we can deduce from Nietzsche's admiration for her as an intellectual equal(remember his MISOGYNY!), that she was the only masculine personality in the triumvirate and thus Nietzsche's love and his homosexuality are validated. Not to mention that Herr Wagner is a dead ringer for Redd Foxx!

All facts and fictions aside, the book made me laugh quite a few times. Maybe the truth was lost somewhere in the translation from German to English but it didn't stop my enjoyment. Why let history and truth get in the way of that? I mean, Nietzschean lore has purported that the young man, while serving in the German calvary during a riding exercise had fallen from his saddle and was dangling upside down under the belly of the horse(Perhaps it was the same horse that he witnessed being flogged and this was what sparked his madness!) and said, "Oh Schopenhauer, where are you now?" Who's buying that but the ghost of Schopenhauer and me?

Esthetic monstrosities
The author of _Zarathustra's secret_ takes us through the period encounter between Nietzsche and Wagner in a quite graphic tale of one of the first of the modern celebrity farces, that of Wagnerian ego and its hangers on. Although the account is well done, I should wonder if a clever cutpurse like Nietzsche was ever really subjugated and whether he didn't, despite an series of emotional shocks, achieve the net equivalent of going undercover as a Wagner disciple, to his profit or loss in unclear. For all the background music of the philosophic, more than musical, leitmotiv (Schopenhauer gave it away with fake hint, the 'will') this account of artistic overdrive twice over is a remarkable tale of psychological helplessness, in Wagner and Nietzsche. Anyway, worth reading.

if your interested in these two, buy it.
NW is not the most academic of books in form, but readability and lack of footnotes do not make a book worthless. Köhler may not have enough evidence to convince the critical, but the material provided is well worth the read. Homosexuality/onanism/anti-semitism: these elements are simply not central to either individual (Wagner's anti-semitism may be the exception). Some of Köhler's conclusions may be questionable, but his observations are not what make the book. The content itself is very interesting, and the intelligent and familiar (with RW/FN) will come away with a great degree of insight. To anyone sincerely interested in either, it is requisite. Perhaps you will not agree with Köhler, so what? The book is simply worth the read. My opinions didn't change from the book, but I have a much richer picture of both men. (I am honesty surprised that anyone could find this book upsetting [see review below]. It's a fun little book, if you hate it, you really ought to relax a bit. Not for tyros: if you've only read a bit of FN or seen an opera, and you want a key to understanding either, forget it. But if you are deep into either, you skip it at your peril.

Incoherent, ignorant, incompetent
Once in a lifetime a book comes along ... that is so arm-wavingly silly that it's almost Pythonesque. This book, "Nietzsche and Wagner: a Study in Subjugation" is actually less reliable than Robert Gutman's or Marc Weiner's Wagner books, which were previously the record-holders. But Kohler beats them hollow. I'm sorry to say that this book has the scholarly merit of a UFO abduction memoir.

Kohler doesn't even bother to try to substantiate his various untrue and silly claims. One of these claims is that Nietzsche was homosexual, for which Kohler (as several critics have pointed out) adduces no evidence at all. Maybe Kohler thinks that Nietzsche calling a book "Die Froeliche Wissenschaft" (The Gay Science) makes Nietzsche "gay" in the current sense. (The meaning of "gay" seems to be changing again, but that's another story.) But we have plenty of evidence of Nietzsche's heterosexuality and no evidence at all of same-sex desire or practice. Nietzsche was a misogynist, hostile and contemptuous towards women, also clearly afraid of them, but that doesn't make him homosexual. Kohler seems to think that claiming something is the same as making it so.

Kohler also claims that after the Nietzsche-Wagner split Wagner conducted a relentless and vindictive campaign against Nietzsche on the grounds that he (Nietzsche) was homosexual. Again, Kohler doen't support this claim of a homophobic campaign by Wagner with any evidence. But then, how could he? There was no such campaign. Instead there was the famous letter from Wagner to Nietzsche's doctor, expressing concern for the health of "our young friend N."and suggesting that Nietzsche's nervous problems might be caused by excessive masturbation.

Wagner's letter is splendidly dotty, but it also brings Kohler's claims crashing to the ground. (1) Masturbation is not the same thing as homosexuality. Wagner did not think Nietzsche was homosexual; instead, prescient in so many things, Wagner was the first major thinker to call Nietzsche a wanker (just kidding, Nietzsche fans). (2) A kindly meant, if eccentric, letter to Nietzsche's doctor is not quite the same thing as persecution. It's clear from Cosima Wagner's Diaries that Wagner's private reaction to the split with Nietzsche was regret, a wish to have the breach healed, and an undoubtedly patronising pity for "that poor young man" Nietzsche. These are not the sort of feelings that lead to persecution or a campaign of vilification, as Kohler claims.

As well, Wagner's actual attitude to homosexuals (there were no gays in the 19th Century) is suggested in an earlier letter to a homosexual friend. Wagner suggests that his friend "try to cut down a little, on the pederasty"... The attitude is one of amused tolerance, which won't do now, but it was progressive and liberal by the standards of his time. Wagner wasn't a homophobe.

In fact Wagner didn't respond in public to Nietzsche's repeated attacks (except once, a very indirect reference in one of his essays, without mentioning Nietzsche's name); contra Kohler, the abuse was very much a one-way street, and not in the direction that Kohler suggests.

Kohler also presents a Nietzsche who wrote antisemitic passages in his works during the alliance with Wagner, but who stopped after the split. This is simply and flagrantly untrue. The post-Wagner Nietzsche attacked antisemites, but he also continued to attack and insult Jews. There are many, many antisemitic passages in Nietzsche's work - Nietzsche fans, like Kohler and the reviewer from Kirkus Review quoted above, like to overlook Nietzsche's antisemitism, but antisemites find Nietzsche a useful supporter and resource. You'll find plenty of antisemitic quotes from Nietzsche on proud display on the Web's neo-Nazi sites, and the vast majority of these antisemitic passages were written AFTER the split with Wagner.

And there's Nietzsche's attack on Wagner in which he claimed that Wagner had a Jewish father. There is irony, of course, in claiming an antisemite has Jewish parentage. But it reflects what Wagner himself seems to have believed, that the man who was almost certainly his real father, Ludwig Geyer, was Jewish. For this attack Nietzsche must have drawn on his private conversations with Wagner, in which Wagner poured out personal fears to a man he believed was his friend. The nastiness in Nietzsche's attack is in the betrayal of confidence, not in the claiming that Wagner had a Jewish parent.

I mention this attack by Nietzsche, couched in antisemitic terms and involving personal betrayal, because Kohler skips blithely over it. Imagine what he'd said if it had been the other way round; Wagner attacking Nietzsche in antisemitic terms while betraying an intimate confidence. But in fact there are suspiciously few quotes of any kind from Nietzsche in Kohler's book. Given the book's profound ignorance of the details of Nietzsche's or Wagner's life and philosophies, I suspect this is not so much because Kohler wants to keep it simple, but because he is not particularly familiar with his subjects' work. Given the sort of book he's written, he didn't need to be.

By the way, an earlier book by Kohler, that's only just been translated into English, "Wagner's Hitler", is now available. Friends who've read the German edition tell me that it's even more fanciful, nonsensical, dishonest and incoherent than this book. I'll look for it in a remainder bin.

Laon ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Indispensable
H.R. Haldeman was the crew-cutted former J. Walter Advertising Executive who joined on the Nixon campaign as an Advance Man, a job that if it is done right, no one notices - but if it is done wrong can destroy a candidacy. Haldeman always made sure every detail was attended to and post-election went on to be one of the most in control and feared Chief of Staff's in Presidential history. Haldeman cashed in shortly after Watergate with his own memoir which he later said didn't turn out the way he wanted thanks to publishers, editors and so forth and hardly got the attention of other Watergate memoirs such as 'Blind Ambition' and 'Will'. We didn't hear much from Bob Haldeman after his release from the Federal Lockup in California. After his death however, according to his wishes, his wife released his diaries the fact that they even existed was a bombshell and they were as complete and detailed as one might expect from this meticulous organization man. These memoirs make you the fly on the wall of the Nixon White House and we witness it go from full of hope, thrill and promise to descending deep into the pit of Watergate until the "cancer" that John Dean described as growing on the Presidency consumes Haldeman himself and the diaries come to a close. A true historical artifact not to be missed.

Exhaustive review of the Nixon Whitehouse...
As Chief-of-Staff, Bob Haldeman is to be commended for keeping such a detailed review of his White House years even during his "fall from grace" in 1973...That being said, the reader should be ready to be taken on an exhaustive and sometimes hard to follow review of the Nixon Administration. A previous knowledge of the Nixon Presidency and particularly Watergate is essential to get the most from this book. I found myself skipping pages as discussion after discussion about Grand Jury testimony and policy meetings on Watergate flooded the chapters towards the end of this book. I gave it 4 stars because the beginning of the book dealing with the initiation of the Nixon Presidency and the day-to-day observations (pre-Watergate) of an intelligent and observant White House executive far outweigh the "burned-out" and frustrated entries that close the book. The most surprising conclusion that I came away with was that Haldeman seemed to be a warm/accomodating "real" person, not the "Nixon Nazi" that he's been made out to be in other works on Watergate. Good reading

Not as good as prior book. More a daily notepad than story
A reader said that the book was a continuation of the 1970s policy-deny,deny, deny.

First of all, it was not a story or an analysis. Read Haldeman's prior book, THE ENDS OF POWER for that sort of thing.

Second, the DIARIES were more like a 5 1/2 year daily memo pad, talking about the day to day operations, from the mundane to the high charging.

Put that in your blowhole and smoke it!

Good insight into the NIxon White House
Nothing in this is going to break Watergate wide open. But if you are interested in the goings-ons in the NIxon White House, this is an excellent book. A little slow at times, but well worth reading.

Brilliant, facinating look inside the Nixon White House
H.R. Haldeman was Pres. Nixon's chief of staff, and right-hand man. Thus, he was privy to all the secrets and intrigue of Nixon's presidency. Haldeman kept an exhaustive written and oral diary of those years, and now they are available in book form. The book is an abridged edition of the diary (but it's still quite long) and is facinating reading. ... Read more

Book Description

The long-awaited biography of the world's most notorious philosopher reveals a man struggling against his own principles. No other modern philosopher has proved as influential as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and none is as poorly understood. In the first major biography in decades, Rüdiger Safranski re-creates the anguished life of Nietzsche while simultaneously assessing the philosophical implications of his morality, religion, and art. Plagued by illness and profoundly shaped by his tortured sexuality, Nietzsche was a man of masks and mood swings, a thinker who called himself "dynamite" yet labored under the weight of compulsive self-consciousness. Posing apt questions and at times offering unorthodox interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophical writings, Safranski offers a brilliant portrait of a historical figure in a work that is as groundbreaking as it will be long-lasting. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Understanding the misunderstood.
To truly understand a philosopher/philosophy, one must understand the context within which that philosopher developed.
Rudiger Safranski does an excellent job of both describing Nietzsche's environments as well as distilling the esentials of his philosophy. Way too many people have mis-stated the Nietzsche message - this is an excellent source to determine what the 'valuable' message is for you.

Best biography/philosophical overview out there.
Since it is impossible to separate Nietzsche's life from his philosophy, Safranski doesn't even try.
This is the best book on Nietzsche and his philosophy I've ever read.
Why? Because instead of trying to explain N's complicated philosophical ideas all by themselves (which invariably leads to many footnotes about N's life to try and clarify them), Safranski explains the evolution of N's philosophy along with his life. You cannot help but understand it in this way.

A Meal Served In Flames
'What meaning would our whole being have if it were not that in us that will to truth has become conscious of itself _as a problem_ within us?' --*On the Genealogy of Morals*

Nietzsche lived the life of an ascetic priest who tried to pull Dionysus *inward*, internalizing the Graeco-Gnostic night journey of transformative self-enhancement, lifelong psychic combat at the frontiers of metaphor and expression. There is so much rebellious kicking and thrashing in N.'s collected works, a witch's wind of wild conjecture emanating from a chthonic whirlpool, that a long, embattled tradition of miscomprehension, accusation, and resentment was bound to ferment in its wake.... In the final year before his breakdown, N.'s landlady heard strange noises coming from his room, and sneaked upstairs to peek through the keyhole. The sight of N. dancing naked like the Hindu god Shiva, teetering on a ground-swell of hysteria, is a popular image (second only to that of a stonefaced, embittered loner pouring scorn on 'the herd' from the separatist darkness of his cold rented room) that Rudiger Safranski aims to dignify, flesh out, qualify, and redact. In this regard, *Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography* is a boon and a delight, a sure-handed trump to all who doubt the centrality of N.'s thought (most American philosophy departments, monopolized by logicians of the 'analytical' school, do not offer a course on Nietzsche).

Safranski's biography hits hermeneutic pay-dirt, delivers all the important playlets and dramas of N.'s strange and embittered life, the byzantine reversals, the ascetic hardships, the wild years of thought-experiment and self-overcoming as this great thinker pioneered the course of non-analytic philosophy in the 20th century. N.'s passion for conjecture inspired him to structure his life so as to yield Dramatis Personae for thought, a vast cosmological theater of monstrous forces and sibylline potency blazing trails through psychology, aesthetics, philosophy of science, moral theory, and (most disastrously) politics. All philosophical thinking that measures its worth against the great Tolstoyan question 'How should one live?' will ultimately circle back to Nietzsche.

Tactfully, Safranski skimps on the details, focusing on N.'s intellectual development, bringing anecdotal data to bear at strategic moments to help qualify the radical contradictions (and/or developmental reversals) of N.'s ever-flowing deluge of path-breaking insights. When the biographer gets his blood up, his pages glimmer with concise, penetrating analogies, quicksilver correspondences, and (most importantly) stark, evenhanded censure whenever N.'s blazing hubris gets ahead of itself, as in the notorious dogmatic triptych of Ubermensch, Eternal Recurrence, and Will to Power -- a thunderous, fulminating triad of doom-eager pomposity, the fulcrum of N.'s last-ditch hysterics and tragic mental collapse.

What moves this reader most (apart from Safranski's sparkling analytic concordance) is the story of N.'s transformative self-dramatizing putting him further and further outside the loop of human relatedness (even as he penetrated deeper into the chthonic underside of morality, desire, and the historical formation of contingent knowledge-structures). The Nietzsche Syndrome has become an occupational hazard for all lonely, dejected, ego-intensive scholars -- a millstone of toxic self-importance contaminating interpersonal nuance and making the most routine human contact an act of heavy lifting. 'I feel as though I am condemned to silence or tactful hypocrisy in my dealings with everybody.' The chapter focusing on N.'s anguished courtship of Lou Andreas-Salome' is powerfully instructive. Here we see the proud egomaniac so befuddled by his philosophic fantasies (and their ruthless misapplication) that the lonely human being fulminating at their center can no longer break bread with the rest of the species. 'My soul was missing its skin, so to speak, and all natural protections.' N.'s failure to heed Zarathustra's doctrine that disciples should abandon their teachers as soon as they have 'found' their teachings brought N. 'to the brink of insanity'(253) in his yearning for Salome', who, once she understood him, left N.'s side for new intellectual horizons. (In an unsent letter, anguished love-trauma turns to squalid, adolescent rancor: 'This scrawny dirty smelly monkey with her fake breasts -- a disaster!') N. had put so much of himself into speculative thought that the intricate eroto-politicking of courtship and love had become flat-out culture-shock, a strange netherworld of alien ritual and occult formality (exacerbated by a string of spontaneous marriage-proposals to various women during periods of depression and self-doubt).

N.'s corpus of thought became, in many respects, a resentful war-machine geared to take imaginary revenge on the European culture that ignored his writings (while he lived), rebuffed his passion for radical redirection and reform, and refused to validate his Ubermenschian self-image as apocalyptic cultural messiah. We all know the story of N.'s betrayal of his earlier anti-essentialism for 'the will to power,' his grasping for the brass ring of Metaphysics, for the Type A theoretical entity that would circumnavigate and contain the Universe in its pan-relational sightlines. As Safranski notes, Heidegger would condemn the Nietzschean will-to-power as the last metaphysical gasp of a resentful philosophic priest (an allegation that would close the karmic circle via Derrida's critique of Heidegger's *own* late theorizing). N. was a new Prometheus who sought to reclaim the religious creativity of the Graeco-Christian world and restructure the soul of humanity with a renewed spiritual vigor (played against a neo-Darwinist backdrop of cold-water atheism to keep thinking 'grounded' in a steely empirical pragmatism). Safranski's text conflates every major biographical and critical analysis into a compact, razorbacked, 400-page monster head-trip written to challenge, delight, amuse, and inspire all comers. His suspenseful and compelling portrait reminds us all of why we got into philosophy in the first place.

This is a restorative text, a ritual reminder of philosophy's manifold glories and fallibilities, and a meal served in flames.

The best book on Nietzsche in decades!
"I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity."--Nietzsche, Aphorism #26 of "Maxims and Arrows," in TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS (translated by Walter Kaufmann).

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) thought of his philosophical adventures as the explorations of a "Columbus of the spirit," a thinker who was an "attempter" or "experimenter" in the realms of wisdom and knowledge. He circled around and around a problem, seeking to gain perspectives on the "truth," boldly venturing into uncharted regions of a wild and restless sea "where there be dragons."

Although one finds certain key ideas in Nietzsche's philosophy--the death of God, the Ubermensch (overman), the eternal recurrence of the same, master morality vs. slave morality, and the will to power--one should not expect to find in his works a dogmatic system.

The "will to a system," he said, "is a lack of integrity." One cannot, nor should one try, to wrap the "world" (the universe or cosmos) in a neat rational package tied with the bow of certainty. Whoever claims to have done so is pathetically self-deceived.

In NIETZSCHE: A PHILOSOPHICAL BIOGRAPHY, Ruediger Safranski has written the most engaging exposition of the development of Nietzsche's thought since the late Walter Kaufmann's NIETZSCHE: PHILOSOPHER, PSYCHOLOGIST, ANTICHRIST (1950; Fourth Edition, 1974).

Born in Germany in 1945, Safranski is one of the most renowned scholars of German philosophy in the world. His previous books include SCHOPENHAUER AND THE WILD YEARS OF PHILOSOPHY (1991) and MARTIN HEIDEGGER: BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL (1998).

"We will never understand Nietzsche," writes Safranski, "if we do not realize that for him ideas possessed actual spiritual and physical reality on a par with passions. . . .Nietzsche's works as a whole are an extended chronicle of the complex events in an experiment to attain power over oneself."

As Walter Kaufmann, and now Ruediger Safranksi, clearly understand, Nietzsche was both a philosopher and a psychologist, a thinker who explored the genealogy of various philosophical, religious, and moral "prejudices" and did so as an "adventurer and circumnavigator of the inner world known as 'human.'"

Just as Immanuel Kant was awakened from his dogmatic slumbers by reading the skepticism of David Hume, and Nietzsche himself was jolted by his discovery of the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer, so today we who read Nietzsche are challenged to reexamine and jettison our dogmatic certainties--to distrust, as he did, all systematizers and peddlers of "absolute truth."

Safranski's assessment of Nietzsche and his philosophy gives evidence not only of the biographer's keen intelligence but also of his mastery of the Nietzschean corpus. It is the best volume on the subject to appear in decades.

more a philosophy than a biography
This book contains quotes from Nietzsche's autobiographical sketches from his teen years. It moves from his conception of music to his horrible plans for The Birth of Tragedy (conceding the need to exploit working classes for art; not included in the final version)... A reappraissal, quite different from Kaufmann's and other American and English interpretations of Nietzsche. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

nixon analyzed
a somewhat critical discussion of nixon's personality and the theories of how he became the man who was eventually impeached. some valid points inthe book that i was unaware of before and then some points which i just sat back and sighed about

A Perfect Example of Propaganda as History...
Dr. Fawn Brodie, who died in 1981, earned a reputation in her lifetime as one of the most controversial historians in America. The product of a strict Mormon upbringing, she rebelled against her faith to become an outspoken feminist and critic of all things she deemed conservative. She also pioneered a new type of historical biography - the "psychoanalytical" school of historiography. Not only did Dr. Brodie write about the lives, successes and/or failures of her subjects, she also attempted to "go deeper" and, using psychology, analyze the motivations and psyches of her subjects. At times her (then) original approach could reap handsome rewards, such as when, in her still-controversial "intimate" biography of Thomas Jefferson, she argued that he had had an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings. Many historians hotly disputed this, but her claims were proven to be true when DNA testing done a few years ago revealed that Jefferson had fathered at least one of Hemmings' children. However, there are also major weaknesses with the "psychological" approach to history, in that it is difficult to analyze someone you've never met, and can lead to mistakes. In this biography of Richard Nixon - her last book before her death - Brodie examines a man whom she admitted to "despising" long before she even began her research. And, unfortunately, this biography is littered from beginning to end with Dr. Brodie's loathing for Richard Nixon and everything connected with him. From his childhood forward Nixon is consistently viewed in the worst possible light. The book is also filled with numerous errors in judgement, as well as factual errors. For example, Brodie finds great significance in a letter that Nixon wrote as a schoolboy. Nixon wrote the letter as if he were a pitiful dog who was being abused by his "master". Brodie argues that this letter "proves" that Nixon was an abused child, and that his father probably beat him. However, research by later historians has proven that this letter was actually done as part of a class assignment, and that ALL of the kids in Nixon's class wrote the same letter - so Brodie's conclusions are obviously flawed. In another telling passage, Brodie harshly criticizes Nixon for his 1950 Senate campaign against Helen Douglas, his Democratic opponent. She accuses Nixon of "smearing" poor Mrs. Douglas as a Communist (Nixon's nickname for her in the campaign was the "Pink Lady"). What she never mentions is that the "Communist" charge was first aimed at Mrs. Douglas by her opponent in the Democratic primary, not Nixon, and that Mrs. Douglas, far from being an "innocent" victim, actually started the mudslinging by trying to accuse Nixon of being a Communist and/or Nazi-type leader! One does not have to be an admirer of Mr. Nixon to realize that this "biography" is anything but impartial or fair-minded. Indeed, later historians have regarded this book as the original "hatchet job" on Nixon, and a work which has been copied by other "Nixon haters". If you want to read a truly fair-minded (and far superior) book about Nixon, I'd recommend reading Stephen Ambrose's excellent "Nixon: The Education of a Politician" - it's much more objective, well-researched, and even-handed - instead of this hopelessly biased "psychological" analysis. ... Read more

Book Description

From one of America's most distinguished historians comes this classic analysis of Richard Nixon. By considering some of the president's opinions, Wills comes to the controversial conclusion that Nixon was actually a liberal. Both entertaining and essential, Nixon Agonistes captures a troubled leader and a struggling nation mired in a foolish Asian war, forfeiting the loyalty of its youth, puzzled by its own power, and looking to its cautious president for confidence. In the end, Nixon Agonistes reaches far beyond its assessment of the thirty-seventh president to become an incisive and provocative analysis of the American political machine. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Forgotten masterpiece
It's too bad that this book is out of print. Probably it stopped selling because of its title -- people must have assumed that it was only relevant for the Nixon era. Not so! The book is valuable today for the evocation of the early part of that time (especially the summer of 1968), but more than that, it is a masterful analysis of that collection of shared intellectual assumptions that make up a great deal of American political (and other) impulses -- specifically, that set of post-Lockean interpretations of social, moral, economic and political life which fall under the rubric of "liberalism". Wills details the connection between Nixon and this background, and the results are far-ranging. Many of the great American assumptions about life are implicated and their mythical foundations revealed: equality of economic opportunity, electoral "mandates", democracy via fair elections in countries that do not have them, fair competition of ideas in academia, and others. Wills leaves no stone unturned. The book deserves to be reprinted again.

Original review above was July 1998; Below added Jan 2003:
Hurrah! It's back in print! Get your copy before it disappears again!

I should have mentioned that, in addition to the fun of watching Wills dismantle the superstructure of liberalism, the book provides great pleasure through its style. Wills writes non-fiction better than most poets write sonnets. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

One of the best biographies of the philosophers
This is a great, however brief, look into the life of one of the world's greatest minds. Hayman opens with a fleeting glance at Nietzsche's genealogy before diving into the seemingly bright life of the future philosopher. He cites Nietzsche's pendulum-esque nationalistic devotion prior to his near-death collapse from a horse. He then charts Nietzsche's intellectual progress from the life-altering secondhand bookstore find of Schopenhauer to the later critique of previous idols Wagner, Kant, and Renee. Hayman, however repetitiously (though nonetheless factually), outlines Nietzsche's incessant battle with illness throughout his life. The key to this text is that is does not attempt a definitive stance at the perpetual enigma as to the cause of Nietzsche's demise, but rather outlines possibilities starting from birth until his death. For those unfamiliar with the German titles of Nietzsche's works, it will require a bit of page flipping to the appendix until one grows accustomed to Hayman's methodology. Also, all passages from the philosopher's works are translated by Hayman that, in some cases, are clearer and more concise than the renounced Kaufmann readings. My only complaint is that Hayman didn't spend more pages in his great explication of the philosopher's life. I rate this alongside Monk's biography of Wittgenstein.

One of the best biographies of Nietzsche I've read.
This biography is the most accurate and indeed, critical. It dealves into the life and thought of one of the greatest thinkers in Western Europe. Anyone who wishes to have a good introduction into Friedrich Nietzsche should read this book...by all means, read it!! ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Well balanced with the focus on Watergate
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
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!
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. best book ever
it was the best book ever my bum is on the swedish! my bum is on the book hehe

A great objective piece of writing
This book seperates fact from fiction, truth from distortion. This final book about Nixon by Stephen Ambrose does a great job of giving both deserved criticizm and deserved acclaim for Nixons final years in the white house and his recovery afterword. Probably the best and fair book regarding Nixon from 1973-1990. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Misleading Title
Perhaps a better title would be "Nixon Juxtaposed." A standard biography focuses on the person,up close and either distorting or ignoring the context. This text pulls the camera back to a distance where the lense incorporates the events and other personalities which were operating simultaneously, giving Nixon a context. And with the broader lense of context comes further revelation. "Nixon and His America" should be read after two or three "hard" biographies. When you think you know Nixon up close and in detail, step back and understand him in bas relief.
If you are of an age that you can remember Nixon as Vice President and forward, then you can participate in this book by comparing your recollections of events with this account. You may or may not adjust your perception. We are all products of our environment and the age in which we live. Nixon was no exception. He, as all of us, had many facets. "Nixon and his America" reveals yet another.

There are better Nixon biographies
I consider this biography to be a disappointment. It is not a "true" catalogue of Nixon's life nor is it an interpretation of his presidency. Nor is it a portrait of "Nixon's America" as the title implies. Whatever this book is, it will not enlighten the reader about who Richard Nixon was or his term in office. There has to be a better book on this subject. I hope.

Scattered Attentions
Mr. Parmet's version of the Nixon biography was very much scattered in many different directions. I did find the story of Richard Nixon quite interesting - when he bothered to talk about it. The course of the book was slow going to start with. Add in the fact there was 2/3 of too much in-depth information not necessary to the bi-line, to only 1/3 about the man himself. I found myself often losing focus throughout the book. My opinion is there has got to be a better Nixon biography out there to read, and my advice would be to find it. Don't bother with this one. ... Read more

Book Description

One of the most controversial chief executives in American history, Richard M. Nixon remains an enigma even thirty years after his resignation. Loved by some and hated by others, Nixon’s life is synonymous with a spectacular fall from power. Of the many portraits of this complex man by friends and foes alike, none have been more intimate or revealing than this memoir from his personal physician, friend, and confidante of more than forty years, John C. Lungren, M.D.

Dr. Lungren, with his son and co-author John C. Lungren Jr., portrays Nixon as a paradoxical man—intense, compassionate, guarded, intelligent, resilient, deeply religious, enormously successful but ultimately tragic. Lungren describes his battle to restore the president’s health after his resignation and reveals previously unknown details about Nixon’s two intensive hospitalizations, his near fatal vascular collapse, and his depression. Lungren experienced firsthand Nixon’s thoughts and feelings during the public scrutiny of federal prosecution for his role in the Watergate break-in. Accused of shielding his friend, Lungren himself came under fire; his private office was even burgled in an apparent attempt to copy Nixon’s private medical records.

Using previously unpublished sources, original correspondence, and private photographs, Healing Richard Nixon places Nixon in an entirely new light. It provides invaluable insight into Nixon’s psyche, and no future research or conclusions about Nixon—the man or the president—will be complete without consulting this fascinating memoir. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

My thoughts
This is a wonderfully well-written book that gives the reader an insightful look into the post-resignation life of RMN. The unique perspective that only Nixon's personal doctor could provide is refreshing and makes for a very interesting read.

Nixon's true medical history
It is truly remarkable to be able to find a credible source that examines Richard Nixon's true medical history. With so much garbage being proliferated by sensationalistic journalists, such as Anthony Summers, it is nice to hear from Nixon's own personal physician. Obviously, since Nixon has been dead since 1994, the author had nothing to hide and introduces historians and scholars to Nixon's health. A must read, first hand account that is a valuable asset to historians.

My Thoughts on "A Doctor's Memoir"
I recently read "Healing Richard Nixon", I found it to be factually flawed and written in a dull and redundant manner. The book implied on several occasions that Richard Nixon was unable to make decisions as a result of his overbearing and controlling Cheif-of-Staff,H.R.Haldeman. It should be perfectly clear to anyone who has ever researched Richard Nixon that he (Nixon) was always capeable of making his own decisions. Haldeman was not the driving force of Nixons insecurities, but was only an asset to the preexisting problem. If you are looking for an accurate portrayal of Nixon, you should look elsewhere. But if you are looking for a poorly written fictional novel, this is the book for you. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Kaisers, Bismarck, and the Nietzsches
Quite a biography, NIETZSCHE, "THE LAST ANTIPOLITICAL GERMAN" by Peter Bergmann, published in 1987, is a historian's attempt to place Nietzsche's writings in the political setting that provides a context for whatever goal Nietzsche might have been driving at in each stage of his development. In the history of philosophy before Nietzsche, Hegel is usually considered an official university philosopher who wished to preserve the significance of theology without clinging to the godlike articles of faith that define God in the hearts of believers. Bergmann asserts that Nietzsche never studied any of Hegel's books, but formed opinions based upon a political context in which the philosophy of Hegel represented an intellectual point of view that only needed to be aped by official philosophers.

I picked this book off my shelf again, after all these years, to look for the modern parallels which, like "The new anarchism of the eighties, heralded by Prince Kropotkin, a scholarly, pacific type, became inarticulate in its love affair with dynamite." (p. 147). Writing about a situation which preceded our times by a hundred years, Bergmann examined Nietzsche's reactions to steps that the United States has recently used against Osama bin Laden.

"Bismarck put increasing pressure on Switzerland. In August 1881 Swiss authorities expelled Kropotkin after his return from a much-publicized international anarchist congress in London. Six months before, the newly elected President of the Swiss Confederacy had committed suicide, stung, it was said, by charges of his former radical friends that he was bargaining away the historic rights of Swiss asylum." (p. 147).

Chapter One, "The Anti-Motif" is short. Much interpretation of Nietzsche has already established that "Nietzsche's works have appropriately been read as a lifelong effort to fashion an `anti-self,' one that would free him from the claims of the initial self. Existentialists, concentrating on the struggles of the self, embraced what they perceived as Nietzsche's flight from the political." (p. 5). In Chapter Two, "The Clerical Son," maintains that "Nietzsche kept the dilemma of the clerical son before him throughout his life." (p. 29).

In our more modern age, dominated by the information provided through a secularized mass media, it might be difficult to picture the authority that Pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813-1849) exercised in the Evangelical church within the provincial world of a small town. Modern presidents who picture their position as a minor miracle granted by God might appreciate such "Pietist theologians and country parsons" who "became the vigilant censors of thought and behavior. Ludwig enthusiastically greeted Friedrich Wilhelm IV's accession and his proclamation of the Christian state. . . . Among Prussia's six thousand Protestant clergymen, Ludwig would be one of the king's most ardent supporters, always believing in the bond between religion and politics." (p. 10). Nietzsche's mother was only seventeen when she married Ludwig, hardly educated, but "They fully shared each other's pietistic enthusiasm. Franziska's strict, simple piety would remain undisturbed throughout her life, with her letters of the 1890s still breathing the emotive and by then anachronistic Pietist language of mid-century." (p. 10).

Those in the 1840s who were expecting that "religion is once again and will in the immediate future be even more the axis around which the world will revolve" (p. 11) were surprised that "The revolution of 1848 would bring this era of religious politics to an abrupt end. Nietzsche's earliest recorded memories were of peasants near his village celebrating the outbreak of the revolution with red flags." (p. 11). "The protestant churches, it seemed, had lost their institutional hold over the populace, and in its stead the army had to secure monarchic authority." (p. 12).

Chapter Three, "The Generation of 1866," tracks "a mood of calamity" (p. 31) in which "the entire issue of Friedrich Wilhelm IV's madness and death was problematic," and the celebration of the coronation of Wilhelm I was described by Nietzsche as "terribly boring, the fireworks on the hill and the bonfire only a little less so, and then the whole evening. It was ghastly." (p. 31). Some people in Iraq seem to be overreacting to their liberation in 2003 from Saddam Hussein with a similar lack of enthusiasm for the American troops who can pull down statues, but then what? Those German young people who expected more opportunities to prosper in the growing federation of German states after the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, also experienced the Danish war which "concluded in a squalid struggle between Prussia and Austria over the spoils." (p. 37). In 1866, "Nietzsche found himself in the anomalous situation of being a Prussian in occupied Leipzig." (p. 47). After some involvement in politics, "Nietzsche left Leipzig to escape the cholera epidemic invading the city." (p. 48).

Chapter Four, "The Spectacle of Greatness," following some previous mention of Schopenhauer, examines the tension between the illegitimacy of the Bismarckian state and the Wagnerian movement toward the Bayreuth festival of 1876. As a young professor, Nietzsche was attempting to bring antiquity to life, and Johann Jacob Bachofen gets credit for "arcane studies of the mythological prehistory of the ancient world that included the novel thesis of an earlier matriarchal age." (p. 90). This should no longer be a surprise. According to Will Durant, THE LIFE OF GREECE, (1939) before Cecrops, who founded Athens, children did not know their own father. "The descendants of Cecrops ruled Athens as kings. The fourth in line was Erechtheus, . . . His grandson, Theseus, about 1250, merged the twelve demes or villages of Attica into one political unity, whose citizens, wherever they lived, were to be called Athenians." Our civilization is only 3400 years younger than that matriarchy, and with all the crazy things that men do, it is not too surprising that Nietzsche started life in a home ruled by his grandmother, who moved the family and let him stay in a back room after his father died. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (2)

a long overdue translation
For a long time this was the most important book on Nietzsche in French that had NOT been transalted into English. So this transaltion is doubly welcome for its tardiness in arriving. This is not an introduction to Nietzsche that makes his thought accessible or understandable by putting Nietzsche's writings into some explanatory context of other philosophical movements . Rather, it attempts to show just how strange, unique, and disorienting Nietzsche's thought can be. Read this book and you'll appreciate the degree to which attempts to "make sense" of Nietzsche invariably tend to simplify, and thereby distort, his thought - they fail to grapple with Nietzche's virulence and indigestibility.

A Truly Frightening Book
I picked my title for this review before I located the best reason for thinking so on page 131, which mentions the history of the link between philosophy and the politics of those who demystify "only in order to mystify better. Although this programme was initially tied to the exercise of power, it here becomes a rule of thought, a metaphysical conception . . . It is not simply a matter of destroying the notions of the true and the false; it also concerns the entrance of obscure forces on to the stage through the moral ruin of the intellect." I read this book as a way of approaching an understanding of the politics of a superpower which is dedicated to keeping its strategic thinking truly nukers, but I appreciated the book more for the frank realization of the pain involved in facing such a dismal philosophy realistically. Nietzsche admitted this most clearly in a letter which he wrote to Gast on 5 October 1879, "I have reasons for fidelity here, for 'behind thought stands the devil' of a tormenting attack of pain." (p. 18) The letters printed from pages 16 to 22 in the chapter on "The Origin of a Semiotic Impulse" are outstanding. On a lighter note, I could play games with the index, where "Jokes" would appear, but it wouldn't be nice for those involved if I pointed out that there aren't any entries between . . . (this would have been funnier if there was an entry for the Joint Chiefs of Staff). There are a lot of entries for "monstrosity," though. Using the index entry for absurdity leads to the assurance that there are some limits which really ought to be observed, because "formations of sovereignty cannot claim to exercise the absurd as violence--if they do not assign themselves a meaning--a meaning in which servitude, the subjected forces, would participate-- and this meaning can never be that of pure absurdity." (p. 119) In short, it is possible to read this book, but it is hardly likely to be edifying unless the reader is deeply vexed and willing to surrender a lot of the sense that a simple circle could pretty much sum up everything, or put things in their respective places and keep them there. ... Read more

Amazon.com

A final, purifying apologia by Richard Nixon, as told to Monica Crowley, his young, just-out-of-college assistant, shortly before his death in 1994. Crowley divulges Nixon's disappointment with the Bush re-election campaign, his later efforts to ingratiate himself with the Clinton administration, and his desperate schemes to once again become a key political player. Once the most compelling and infuriating political figure in the last half of the 20th century, Nixon Off The Record reveals that his 20-year exile from the political arena was more painful and humiliating than anyone ever imagined. ... Read more

Reviews (22)

Enjoyable reading. Useful.
Monica Crowley's book is very good in describing her daily work with one of the best american politician, it is a true portrait of a man with a great understanding of politics, foreing policy in particular. The outstanding fact is Nixon share with Ms.Crowley of his most personal political convictions and projects, so in the end the impression you have is that of a sincere, true, skillful man, that only one of the worst name-calling political and media campaign could render as false and paranoid ; that is why I say that this book is useful.
Strangely, the last months of Nixon's life are covered very quickly, compared with the other ones, maybe because you'll find them examined in Ms.Crowley other book " Nixon In Winter ", that I'm curious to read. so, Monica Crowley has done a very good job.

Self-absorption at its worst
This is not an examination of Richard Nixon, it's a book about the author, Monica Crowley. I can't imagine anyone putting any credence in something which consists exclusively of lengthy quotes from Nixon, when Crowley admits she never used a tape recorder and relied on "after the fact notes." Give me a break! No one has such a prodigious memory as to remain monologues that lasted over an hour and then claim to reproduce Nixon's thoughts verbatim. Yet Crowley miraculously pulls this off.

Richard Nixon was notoriously uncomfortable around women. He wasn't around women, he was distant to his own wife and no extra-marital affair has ever been documented. Yet we are supposed to believe that the aging Nixon would place extraordinary trust in a young woman, tell her his innermost secrets and spend vast amounts of time with her talking geo-politics? It's a wonder that fewer people have questioned the credibility of this account. Though the quotes all sound Nixonian in the extreme, a cynic would cry foul with this anemic effort.

Should Have Been On The Couch
If you ever wondered what an ex President might talk about with his friends then you need to buy this book, a real fly on the wall type book. I have to admit up front that I really liked this book. It was not that I have a deep interest in Nixon or that Nixon spelled out some overly insightful view of the political landscape. It was just that this author did such a good job of detailing out (quoting) so many of Nixon's musings about the political landscape from 90 to 94. I was most surprised at how petty he came off. He was whining and complaining about the press in about every three sentences. Regardless of the situation, he somehow related it back to how the press and Democrats unfairly went after him during the Watergate scandal. At this point in his life he must have focused on it so much that he saw the whole world through this hate filled prism.

I guess it was not such a surprise about Nixon disliking the press, but what did surprise me is that it seamed that he disliked any President that came after him. In his mind, they all fell short of his accomplishments and were far from a close second. He of course would then work in a diatribe about the press and how they will never give him the credit he deserves. It was interesting that he had such a low opinion of Bush Sr., he went after Bush on the poor reelection campaign, which was fair enough, but he also let him have it about every aspect of his Presidency. Yet his opinion would change the minute anyone in the Bush administration called him. Once he was shown some attention his opinion would suddenly change and all was right again with Bush, at least for a few weeks. I was surprised by this very apparent selfish and almost immature behavior.

I was again surprised by his roller coaster ride with President Clinton, during the campaign he down right hated the man. Once Clinton became the President and started calling Nixon, he is thought of by Nixon as FDR reincarnated. Well it was very predictable that when Clinton started to distance himself from Nixon that the ugly side of tricky Dick came back into the picture. Overall Nixon came off as a man with a very bruised ego and a bit bitter. I thought he some good views on the political situation of the time, but it was basically common sense. I kept thinking that if you follow politics you would have many of the same observations. I guess I just thought given his long career that he would somehow have insight that really would have surprised me. Overall the book was very interesting and a fast read. I had trouble putting it down. If you are interested in American politics then this a great book.

Perhaps the most accurate view of Nixon as a personality
Monica Crowley focuses on the three qualities Nixon has said each political personality absolutely requires for survival and thriving: head; heart; and guts. Crowley's readable work exemplifies the political mind that Nixon used to gain election as a U.S. Senator, the political savvy that kept him on the Republican ticket in 1952, and the mastery that saw his elections change for the better from 1960 to 1968. Crowley doesn't shape anything that Nixon says, other than to put it into proper context, because she knows Nixon's words and ideas speak for themselves. He doesn't need a mouthpiece and not every thing he says is controversial or outlandish and deserving of reprisal from political foes, as any careful reader of Nixon's own books will come to understand. This work further exonerates Nixon from the political graveyard much more so that his own books following his resignation. Crowley's articulate, readable format is sure to rekindle reader's interest in Nixon as a person and as a personality.

Very interesting, learn a lot about Nixon
This is a very interesting, fun-to-read book. You will learn a lot about the way Nixon thinks, and his longing to be known as one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century.

Although you feel somewhat uncomfortable reading the text, knowing that Crowley betrayed Nixon's trust in her by writing this book, the quotes are too delicious to ignore.
The book is divided into three sections; "Head, Heart, and Guts," which explores Nixon's views on politics and the various presidents, "The 1992 Presidential Election," and "Nixon's Third Term," which pretty much deals with Nixon's interactions with the new President Clinton until Nixon's death.

Even though I am a Democrat, I found that several of Nixon's views were parallel to mine. He is very thoughtful about every political issue, and not afraid to stray from his party (privately, at least.) His thoughts about the former presidents, and all the different ways in which they angered him, will delight every reader. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A fine exit
This book is the story of the Jack Nicklaus's farewell tour of the 4 majors. After hip replacement surgery, Nicklaus decided that 2000 would be the last year he would attempt to play in all 4 of professional golf's major championships. In a way, the timing worked out great. He was not normally exempt for the U.S. Open, and he assumed that 2000 would be the last year he would be granted a special exemption to play. I guess I am of the age that I really don't quite remember him when he was at his dominant peak of golf in the 70's. I just remember his great wins at the U.S. Open and at the Masters when most people had written him off as being too old. So this book is confirmation of his role as probably the greatest golfer of the 20th century, but is is sort of sad at the same time that it isn't until the age of 60 (!) that Nicklaus has to admit to giving into father time. He admits that he can't apply his ferocious will to get the ball in the hole when he wants to anymore. If you are a fan of Jack or of golf in general, this book is highly recommended ... Read more

Book Description

From acclaimed biographer Stephen E. Ambrose comes the life of one of the most elusive and intriguing American political figures, Richard M. Nixon. From his difficult boyhood and earnest youth to bis ruthless political campaigns for Congress and Senate to his defeats in '60 and '62, Nixon emerges life-size in all his complexity. Ambrose charts the peaks and valleys of Nixon's first fifty years -- his critical support as a freshman congressman of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; his involvement in the House Committee on Un-American Activities; his aggressive pursuit of Alger Hiss; his ambivalent relationship with Eisenhower; and more. It is the consummate biography; it is a stunning political odyssey. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

A Balanced Assessment of a Complex Man
In the dedication page of this book, Ambrose lets the reader know that his two brothers ensured that there was always a two-to-one Nixon vote among the Ambrose boys. A clever way of letting the reader know that he favored Kennedy over Nixon. However, Ambrose is scrupulously objective in this biography of the oft-maligned Richard Nixon. In fact Ambrose's objectivity in this biography apporaches sublime detachment, in striking contrast to the author's later work on Meriwether Lewis,Undaunted Courage. Nixon's legendary persistence is revealed in every stage of his life- Whittier College, law school at Duke University,a young congressman, then Senator, and Vice-President. Ambrose neither demonizes nor sanctifies Nixon. He merely recounts each stage of his life thoroughly, methodically. Ambrose does not insult the reader with new age psycho babble when he probes the possible impact on Nixon of the death of his two brother's from youthful, tragic illnesses. As for Nixon's aloof personality, perhaps Nixon's own mother characterized his personality best when she remarked that he always seemed to be a child whom you would call Richard. Some interesting things about Nixon are revealed, or better said, are reminded to us by Ambrose. Ambrose dismisses the popular notion that Nixon was evil politics incarnate when he made Helen Douglas out to be weak on communism during Nixon's successful run for the Senate in 1950. Ambrose concludes that Nixon was simply playing to win and that Helen Douglas was hardly the paragon of virtue hailed by the press. Ambrose reveals the delicious irony that one Senator Jack Kennedy held Helen Douglas in very low regard and gave Nixon $1,000 from old man Joseph Kennedy for his campaign against her. Nixon was a staunch, but unheralded supporter of civil rights. Ambrose points out that Martin Luther King voted Republican in the 1956 presidential campaign and was circumspect of Kennedy's commitment to civil rights legislation. Politically astute and ambitious he certainly was, but Nixon did not play racial politics in order to gain votes in the South during the 1960 presidential campaign. And looking back on the closest presidential election in this century, one can argue persuasively that Nixon's unwillingness to exploit the racial issue in the South easily denied him this heavily protestant region that was very uneasy with the catholic Kennedy. Allowing that election fraud was highly probable in both Texas and Illinois, Ambrose does not dodge the matter of the 1960 election being stolen from Nixon and praises Nixon for his wisdom in not contesting the results. The reader is never tempted to love Richard Nixon, but one de