Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (English Edition)

With a new preface: A stunning analysis of the troubled Republican president by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg (The New York Times Book Review). In this acclaimed biography that earned him a spot on Nixons infamous enemies list, Garry Wills takes a thoughtful, in-depth, and often very amusing look at the thirty-seventh US president, and draws some surprising conclusions about a man whose name has become synonymous with scandal and the abuse of power (Kirkus Reviews). Arguing that Nixon was a reflection of the country that elected him, Wills examines not only the psychology of the man himself and his relationships with othersfrom his wife, Pat, to his vice-president, Spiro Agnewbut also the state of the nation at the time, mired in the Vietnam War and experiencing a cultural rift that pitted the young against the old. Putting his findings into moral, economic, intellectual, and political contexts, he ultimately paints a broad and provocative landscape of the nationsand Nixonstravails (The New York Times). Simultaneously compassionate and critical, and raising interesting perspectives on the shifting definitions of terms like conservative and liberal over recent decades, Nixon Agonistes is a brilliant and indispensable book from one of Americas most acclaimed historians.