Random House
June 2015
On Sale: June 16, 2015
Featuring: Richard Nixon
640 pages ISBN: 0812995368 EAN: 9780812995367 Kindle: B00UEL0J0G Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
βWhat was it really like to be Richard Nixon? Evan Thomas tackles this fascinating question by peeling back the layers of a man driven by a poignant mix of optimism and fear. The result is both insightful history and an astonishingly compelling psychological portrait of an anxious introvert who struggled to be a transformative statesman.ββWalter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
Evan Thomas delivers the best single-volume biography of Richard Nixon to date, a radical, unique portrait of a complicated figure who was both determinedly optimistic and tragically flawed. The New York Times bestselling author of Ikeβs Bluff and Sea of Thunder, Thomas brings new life to one of American historyβs most infamous, paradoxical, and enigmatic politicians, dispensing with myths to achieve an intimate and evenhanded look at the actual man.
What drove a painfully shy outcast in elite Washington societyβa man so self-conscious he refused to make eye contact during meetingsβto pursue power and public office? How did a president so attuned to the American political id that he won reelection in a historic landslide lack the self-awareness to recognize the gaping character flaws that would drive him from office and forever taint his legacy?
In Being Nixon, Evan Thomas peels away the layers of the complex, confounding figure who became Americaβs thirty-seventh president. 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, he was constantly leading crusades and fighting off enemies real and imagined. As maudlin as he was Machiavellian, Nixon possessed the plainspoken eloquence to reduce American television audiences to tears with his career-saving βCheckersβ speech; meanwhile, his darker half hatched schemes designed to take down his political foes, earning him the notorious nickname βTricky Dick.β
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 deviousnessβa balanced portrait of a president too often reduced to caricature.
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