As maudlin as he was Machiavellian, Nixon possessed the plainspoken eloquence to reduce American television audiences to tears with his career-saving Checkers speech; meanwhile, his darker half hatched schemes designed to take down his political foes, earning him the notorious nickname Tricky Dick.
The result is both insightful history and an astonishingly compelling psychological portrait. Walter 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 "Ike s Bluff "and" Sea of Thunder, "Thomas brings new life to one of American history s 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 society a man so self-conscious he refused to make eye contact during meetings to 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 America s 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 Checkers speech; meanwhile, his darker half hatched schemes designed to take down his political foes, earning him the notorious nickname Tricky Dick.