Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

In this acclaimed biography that earned him a spot on Nixon's 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 others-from his wife, Pat, to his vice-president, Spiro Agnew-but 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 nation's-and Nixon's-travails' (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 America's most acclaimed historians.