Richard Milhous Nixon; The Invincible Quest

London: Quercus, 2007. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. ix, [1], 1152, [6] pages. Illustrations. Occasional footnotes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Minor wear and tear to cover, especially top spine at rear. Originally published in Canada by McLelland @ Stewart Ltd., Toronto. Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour KCSG (born 25 August 1944), is a Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher, businessman, and writer. He was granted a peerage in 2001 and because of the Nickle Resolution, which bans British honours for Canadian citizens, gave up his Canadian citizenship in order to accept the title. He has written eleven books, mostly in the fields of Canadian and American history, including biographies of Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis and US presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, as well as two memoirs. He has also hosted two interview shows on the Canadian cable network VisionTV. He is a political conservative, and belonged to the UK's Conservative Party, but also has some idiosyncratic views, including his support for Roosevelt's New Deal. Derived from a Kirkus review: A lively, hugely sympathetic biography of possibly the most intriguing man to occupy the Oval Office. Following his comprehensive treatment of FDR, Black turns to the only other man who five times faced a nationwide electorate, who dominated, for better or worse, the second half of America’s 20th-century politics, much as Roosevelt towered over the first. By 1962, Nixon—not yet 50 and already a war veteran, lawyer, nationally famous congressman, senator and two-time vice president—had lost the closest presidential election in American history and a subsequent race for California governor. But the world had only begun to hear from him. He was acutely intelligent, emotionally awkward, deeply insecure and strangely mechanical in his actions, but it was his sheer relentlessness that accounted for his astonishing career. From his hardball campaigns, to his pursuit of Alger Hiss, to the Checkers speech that kept him on the Eisenhower ticket, to his kitchen debate with Khrushchev and his TV face-offs with JFK, to his infamous “last press conference,” to his White House comeback, Nixon, the era’s foremost Cold Warrior, battled fiercely. As Black tells it, by the tumultuous late ’60s, Nixon had accumulated an army of enemies in the liberal establishment only too happy, once he “gave them a sword” in the form of the Watergate scandal, to bring him down. Throughout, the author views Nixon as more sinned against than sinning. Though he balances the record in many important respects, he claims too much for his subject: that the 37th president valiantly championed civil rights, that his post-presidential resurrection was indeed successful. Nixon certainly had his share of presidential triumphs—the opening to China foremost among them. Nixon’s complex character and his contentious times leave plenty of room for the narrative of events offered here. A massively detailed assessment of a seemingly imperishable politician whose controversial career insures that this won’t be the last word. Condition: Good.

Keywords: Richard Nixon, President, Watergate, Alger Hiss, Dwight Eisenhower, Vietnam War, Spiro Agnew, Anti-War Movement, Murray Chotiner, Chou En-Lai, John Dean, Henry Kissinger, Mao Tse-tung, Joseph McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller

ISBN: 9781847243751

[Book #85605]

Price: $85.00