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Before the fall : an inside view of the pre-Watergate White House / William Safire.
Author
Safire, William, 1929-2009
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/Created
New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Publishers, 2005.
Description
xxv, 704 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Availability
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
ReCAP - Remote Storage
E855 .S23 2005
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Details
Subject(s)
United States
—
Politics and government
—
1969-1974
[Browse]
Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous) 1913-1994
[Browse]
Summary note
Synopsis: William Safire was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon from 1968 to 1973. During that time, as a Washington insider, Safire was able to observe the thirty-seventh president in his entirety: as noble and mean-spirited; as good and bad; as a man desirous of greatness. Rarely has there been a White House memoir more intimate or revealing in its exploration of the great events that took place "before the fall" of Watergate. In this anecdotal history, Nixon and his associates come alive, not as caricatures, but as men with high and low purpose: Henry Kissinger, William Rogers, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and Arthur Burns struggle not just for power, but for ideals.^
As William Safire says in his Prologue: "In this memoir, which is neither a biography of [Nixon] nor an autobiography of me nor a narrative history of our times, there is an attempt to figure out what was good and bad about him, what he was trying to do and how well he succeeded, how he used and affected some of the people around him, and an effort not to lose sight of all that went right in examining what went wrong." The book is divided into ten sections, in which run three main themes: the President, the Partisan, and the Person. As a president, Safire discusses Nixon and the Vietnam War, foreign policy, economics, and race relations. As a partisan, he discusses Nixon's attempt to form an alignment across party lines, successful in many respects before the president tolerated the excesses that eventually corrupted his administration.^
And as a person, Safire finds that Nixon was a mixture of Woodrow Wilson, Machiavelli, Theodore Roosevelt, and Shakespeare's Cassius--an idealistic conniver evoking the strenuous life while he thinks too much. This paperback edition of a classic primary source for historians includes a new introduction by its author. Studded with direct quotations that put the reader in the room where history was being made, Before the Fall is a realistic, shades-of-gray study of the Nixon years.
Notes
Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1975.
Includes index.
Action note
Committed to retain in perpetuity — ReCAP Shared Collection (HUL)
Contents
Preface to the transaction edition
Preface to the 1977 edition
Prologue
Part 1: Comeback:
1: Twenty Broad Street
2: Dear Nelson
3: Turning point
4: Washin' dirty dishes
5: Man who
6: Nixon's the one
Part 2: It Sure Beats Losing:
1: Man at the Wilson desk
2: Interregnum
3: No end runs
Part 3: Bone In The Throat:
1: Hello, Europe
2: New isolationists
3: Tale of two bridges
4: Kennedy criterion
5: Henry the K
6: Silent majority
7: Cambodian decision
8: Night at the Lincoln Memorial
Part 4: Lowered Voices:
1: New Federalism
2: Wayward bus
3: Damngovernment
4: Rise of John Mitchell
5: Loners stick together
6: Nixon's Haldeman
7: Loomings
8: Swearing-in
Part 5: Seeds Of Destruction:
1: Us against them
2: 70 campaign begins
3: Way to San Jose
4: Good honest appraisal
5: Press is the enemy
6: To Peking in secret
Part 6: High Adventure:
1: State of the world
2: Secret negotiations, inside and out
3: China report
4: Guns of April
5: Road to Moscow
6: Moscow summit
Part 7: Mudding Along On The Home Front:
1: Nixon's Ehrilchman
2: Wayward bus revisited
3: Hardball
4: President falls in love
5: Economic summit
6: Ad lib
Part 8: New Majority:
1: Two-ideology system
2: Nixon and the Catholics
3: Nixon and the Jews
4: Work ethic
5: Labor rewards its friends
Part 9: Private Man:
1: There is a there there
2: Alone together: Pat Nixon
3: Bebe
4: Hideaway
5: Julie
Part 10: Man In The Arena:
1: Fall of John Mitchell
2: Campaign that never was
3: Bizarre incident
4: Christmas bombs
5: Peace with honor
6: Best year ever
Epilogue
Index.
Show 71 more Contents items
ISBN
1412804663 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
LCCN
^^2005041717
OCLC
57531447
RCP
H - S
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