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Richard Nixon
- The Life
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 28 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's summary
Brilliantly researched, authoritatively crafted by a prize-winning biographer, this is the Nixon we've been waiting for.
Richard Nixon opens with young navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returning from the Pacific and setting his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes quickly gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. It is a stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial portrait of a man who embodied postwar American cynicism.
Within four years of that first win, Nixon would be a US senator, in six the vice president of the United States of America. "Few came so far, so fast, and so alone," Farrell writes. Finally president, Nixon's staff was full of bright young men who devised forward-thinking reforms addressing health care, poverty, civil rights, and protection of the environment. It was a fine legacy, but Nixon cared little for it. He aspired to make his mark on the world stage instead, and his 1972 opening to China was the first great crack in the Cold War.
Nixon had another legacy, too: an America divided and polarized. It was Nixon who launched the McCarthy era, who set South against North, and who spurred the silent majority to despise and distrust the country's elites. He persuaded Americans to gnaw, as he did, on grievances - and to look at one another as enemies. Finally, in August 1974, after two years of the mesmerizing intrigue and scandal known as Watergate, Nixon became the only president to resign in disgrace.
Richard Nixon is an enthralling tour de force biography of our darkest president, one that reviewers will hail as a defining portrait, and the full life of Nixon listeners have awaited.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: Watergate, 50 Years Later—Essential Listening on the Political Scandal and Its Aftermath
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This great time capsule of a book captures the abundant popular history of the United States from 1932 to 1972. It encompasses politics, military history, economics, the lively arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications, graffiti...everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print.
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Fabulous book, good narration, bad recording
- By Paula on 07-10-08
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1920
- The Year of Six Presidents
- By: David Pietrusza
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The presidential election of 1920 was among history's most dramatic. Six once-and-future presidents--Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt--jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson's League of Nations and Harding's front-porch isolationism, the 1920 election shaped modern America.
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A fascinating view into the US at the end of WWI
- By D. Littman on 12-31-09
By: David Pietrusza
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Camelot's End
- Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight That Broke the Democratic Party
- By: Jon Ward
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The Carter presidency was on life support. The Democrats, desperate to keep power and yearning to resurrect former glory, turned to Ted Kennedy. Camelot's End details the incredible drama of Kennedy's challenge - what led to it, how it unfolded, and its lasting effects - with cinematic sweep. It is a story about what happened to the Democratic Party when the country's long string of successes, luck, and global dominance following World War II ran its course, and how, on a quest to recapture the magic of JFK, Democrats plunged themselves into an intra-party civil war.
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Does character count in political office?
- By marwalk on 07-29-19
By: Jon Ward
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JFK's Last Hundred Days
- The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President
- By: Thurston Clarke
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s final days that asks what might have been. Fifty years after his assassination, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of great change, both in his family and in the key issues of his day: The Cold War, Civil Rights, and Vietnam, finally on the cusp of making good on his extraordinary promise.
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In Depth and Beautifully Written
- By grace on 06-03-23
By: Thurston Clarke
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Presidential Courage
- Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989
- By: Michael Beschloss
- Narrated by: Michael Beschloss
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Abridged
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Michael Beschloss' dramatic and inspiring saga explores crucial times when courageous president changed the history of the United States. With surprising new sources and a dazzling command of history and human character, Beschloss brings these flawed, complex men and their wives, families, friends, and foes to life as if in a gripping novel. Never have we had a more intimate, behind-the-scenes view of Presidents coping with the supreme dilemmas of their lives.
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Disappointing
- By Donna on 05-13-07
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Whistlestop
- My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History
- By: John Dickerson
- Narrated by: John Dickerson
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Whistlestop tells the human story of nervous gambits hatched in first-floor hotel rooms, failures of will before the microphone, and the cross-country crack-ups of long-planned stratagems. At the bar at the end of a campaign day, these are the stories reporters rehash for themselves and embellish for newcomers. In addition to the familiar tales, Whistlestop also remembers the forgotten stories about the bruising and reckless campaigns of the 19th century.
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Lovers of the podcast this is ultimate fix!
- By killerqueen on 09-06-16
By: John Dickerson
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Days of Fire
- Bush and Cheney in the White House
- By: Peter Baker
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 29 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Theirs was the most captivating American political partnership since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger: a bold and untested president and his seasoned, relentless vice president. Confronted by one crisis after another, they struggled to protect the country, remake the world, and define their own relationship along the way. In Days of Fire, Peter Baker chronicles the history of the most consequential presidency in modern times through the prism of its two most compelling characters, capturing the elusive and shifting alliance of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney as no historian has done before.
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A balanced account of the W and Cheney White House
- By Scott on 11-15-13
By: Peter Baker
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Those Angry Days
- Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941
- By: Lynne Olson
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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At the center of the debate over American intervention in World War II stood the two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the interventionist cause, and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as unofficial leader and spokesman for America's isolationists emerged as the president's most formidable adversary. Their contest of wills personified the divisions within the country at large, and Lynne Olson makes masterly use of their dramatic personal stories to create a poignant and riveting narrative.
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Incivility in Politics - A Real Shocker!
- By Carole T. on 04-24-13
By: Lynne Olson
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The Kennedy Half Century
- The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy
- By: Larry J. Sabato
- Narrated by: Chris Kayser
- Length: 24 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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John F. Kennedy died half a century ago - yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato - himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency - explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors.
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Job Well Done
- By Kathy on 08-12-14
By: Larry J. Sabato
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Eisenhower
- The White House Years
- By: Jim Newton
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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If you think of our 34th president as little more than the babysitter-in-chief during the prosperous fifties, think again. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed an atomic bomb and was the first American president not to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, "McCarthywasm".
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A simpler time?
- By Ray on 11-12-11
By: Jim Newton
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Master of the Senate
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
- By: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Abridged
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Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his 12 years in the U.S. Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. "There is something uniquely mesmerizing about the wily, combative Lyndon Johnson as portrayed by Caro," says Publishers Weekly.
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Abridgement bad
- By Shelly Brisbin on 09-05-04
By: Robert A. Caro
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Pretty obvious this was written by a Democrat
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Pretty obvious this was written by a Democrat
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LBJ The Greatest President of 20th century
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Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the 20th century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient, an impediment to personal liberty.
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Very little about Reagan
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Destiny and Power
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Drawing on President Bush’s personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the 41st president and his family, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times.
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Fair and insightful
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What listeners say about Richard Nixon
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tad Davis
- 06-04-17
Well balanced and proportioned
John Farrell has written a well-documented and reasonably balanced biography of one of our most controversial presidents. He covers everything from the lemon farm and the "house my father built," through Watergate and on to Nixon's rehabilitation and death. In between he gives a full accounting of Helen Gahagan Douglas, Jerry Voorhees, Alger Hiss, Dwight Eisenhower, and the Plumbers. He maintains an admirable sense of proportion throughout.
Richard Nixon is one of my hobbies; I lived through his terms both as Vice President and President, and devoured Watergate books in the years since. And I have to give Farrell credit for rectifying some of my ideas about Nixon. As evil as some of his actions were - John Dean couldn't have selected a more damning set of quotes from the Watergate tapes than Farrell provides - he comes across here as a human being rather than a mythological beast.
I found only one passage where Farrell's sense of balance seems to leave him. He attacks the prosecution of Nixon's top aides - Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and others - as the corrupt product of a kangaroo court, charging collusion between prosecutors and judge, and decrying the jail sentences that were handed down. What kind of justice system, he asks, would send somebody like Donald Segretti to jail and let John Dean off the hook? Yet Segretti and Dean both pled guilty and both spent four months in prison. That seems pretty fair to me.
Dan Woren provides a brisk narration, maintaining the pace and engagement throughout. I enjoyed it a lot. I'll mention one small point - a point that many audiobooks about Nixon get wrong, but that Woren gets right. Gordon Strachan was a minor player in Watergate, but he deserves to have his name pronounced correctly. His last name rhymes with "brawn," not with "bacon."
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22 people found this helpful
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- Suzanne R.
- 05-30-17
Listen with an open mind
Being a teenage and "twenty something " during the Vietnam war and Nixon years, I hesitantly chose to this book. With deliberate objective listening, I was surprised to feel a sense of empathy for this troubled and misguided man. Even with that strained understanding, I still cannot muster enough empathy to overcome my contempt for some of his decisions and actions. If you can be open minded, it is worth a read or listen and may even enlighten on the importance of character and shared values in those we elect.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-14-20
liberal skew.
had promise that it could be good but the deeper you get into it the worse the liberal bias comes out. just wanted a biography not a hatchet job.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Philo
- 01-28-18
Rich detail, well told always, gives great insight
This is a masterpiece. Every sentence seems crafted to give the most useful info in the most listenable phrasing. As a listener through several books on Nixon, this one best told the story and explained the context of each event. The portraits of each person are compact but well done to convey what the listener needs to know. Would give 6 stars if I could. The narrator is serviceable and, as the hours go by, wears well on the ears.
Aside from crafting the best phrasings, the author came up with some definitive evidence on the Chennault affair, before Nixon's first election as president, in which Nixon (as a mere candidate, communicating through Anna Chennault) made a pitch to South Vietnamese President Thieu to scuttle the deal then-President LBJ was cooking up with all parties in the Vietnam conflict, to create a path to de-escalate the war. This was done cynically and quite possibly illegally to serve Nixon's electoral strategy. (Shades of the tussles pending now in DC about 2016 pre-election Trump and Russia.)
I have long viewed Nixon's as perhaps the most useful individual's story in decoding USA's political and geopolitical history from about 1950 to 1975. This book more than lived up to its possibilities in completely fleshing out the story.
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- Michael Friedman
- 07-10-17
A Fine Biography
Mr. Farrell has written an excellent biography of President Nixon using fairly recently declassified tapes and notes, particularly from Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. He does a nice job of painting the early Nixon and his evolution from brilliant politician (his Checkers speech was groundbreaking) to criminal megalomaniac. In all, he was always the same, but Farrell gives perspective to Nixon's criminal behavior (the taping and illegal hounding of enemies by presidents did not start with Nixon in any respect) and his accomplishments (China opening in spite of his anti-Communist past and that of the Republicans), the Russian SALT treaty, environmental preservation, savior of Israel after the coordinated attack. This is all of course balanced by Watergate (yes, it was far more than the coverup), interference with Johnson's Viet Nam negotiations thanks to Henry Kissinger, the bombing of Cambodia, the failure to pursue the end of the Vietnam war for nearly 8 years costing tens of thousands of American lives and his knowing support and ultimate betrayal of South Viet Nam. He knew full well that Peace With Honor was nonsense, but ultimately he had no further political use to extend the war. The quoted statements and notes are often chilling and Farrell does a fine job of describing the family, upbringing (California Quaker), prejudice (Ivy league, Alger Hiss) health and financial pressures that drove Nixon to become our most famous criminal, disgraced president.
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- Kindle Customer
- 06-11-20
A Decent Summary but No Great Insights
This book is a perfectly fine summary of the life and career of Richard Nixon. It is pretty even-handed in its treatment, noting and highlighting both his accomplishments and his terrible flaws. But if you are looking into deeper insights into what made the man, one of the most strange and fascinating characters in 20th century American politics, tick, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Maybe I've just been spoiled by Robert Caro's incredible multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, in which you truly get to know the man and all the many people who surrounded him, what he wanted, why he behaved the way he did, what motivated him, etc. Yes this is just one volume and Caro's, possibly one of the best biographies of all time, is 4 volumes with a 5th on the way, but I was really hoping for more.
And if we are going to compare the two biographies, the different treatment of the 1957 civil rights bill is, to say the least, interesting. To hear Farrell tell it, Nixon was a driving force behind the bill and Johnson did everything in his power to stop it. To hear Caro (who is often extremely critical of Johnson) tell it, Nixon and Eisenhower cared very little about the bill and Johnson's many compromises, manipulations, and cloakroom deals are the only reason the bill passed the Senate. Needless to say, Caro's telling is far more convincing.
Anyway, if you are looking for a decent telling of the facts of Nixon's life, this book will serve.
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- Grace O'Malley
- 04-24-17
A page-turner with depth
This biography is thorough and fair, yet leaves the reader as puzzled as ever about Nixon's personality. I don't think the man will ever be explainable beyond a conclusion that he was amoral and incapable of empathy, and childhood losses don't seem to really explain that. He seemed to have moments of caring and a sense of fair play...but then would turn on a dime and calmly eviscerate a political enemy. I can't say there were many new facts in this book - except for the unconscionable dealing with North Vietnam that extended the war 3 more years and cost 20,000 additional lives so Nixon could get elected. But the book flows and the darkening of his character continues inexorably.
Reader is wonderful except for a couple of mispronounced words and a very odd tic of saying long vowel sounds in a strangulated way; reminded me of Bullwinkle of Rocky and __. It became distracting for me because the reader has a resonant and pleasant voice, and he reads with much expression, keeping the story moving. But then there will be a phrase like "green fees" (think Bullwinkle) and I cringe.
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- David Rhodes
- 04-08-19
Sympathy for the Devil?
I inherited my father's contempt for President Nixon, but Farrell's biography gave me new found appreciation. Not a whitewashing of sins, but placing politics in the context of an entire life.
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- Matt Lech
- 04-02-17
better than the Evan Thomas bio
which has a similar scope, so if you're in the market for a general Nixon bio this is the one.
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- ANTHONY THOMPSON
- 08-29-20
Captivating
What a heck of a life. He was a real person and I believe he was more than misunderstood and horribly underestimated. He meant well and was more than a descent President. He deserves far more honor than he received. Other Presidents that proceeded him would have done well to try to emulate some of his descent moral and family values. This is the stuff that a Statesman should be made of.
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