Essential for students of late-20th-century American history and the Nixon presidency.
Brinkley and Nichter (The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972, 2014, etc.) conclude their project of publishing highlights from Richard Nixon’s infamous tapes with this volume from the last year of recording.
“They’ve killed me. Get rid of the old son of a bitch—people don’t want him anyway.” Thus spoke Nixon at the end of a bitter year, though it was better than the one that followed. “They” were the Washington press corps, the intelligentsia, the liberal establishment—everyone who stood in Nixon’s way, which, by 1973, was just about everyone. This volume finds Nixon often exulting publicly thanks to the emerging success of his rapprochement and trip to China, the winding down of the Vietnam War, and growing détente with the Soviet Union. Some of the most affecting conversations on these tapes take place between Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and their interpreters, groping toward friendship. Yet, in the private moments the tapes record, Nixon is also constantly worried about his enemies and, more so, his friends: “Nixon’s greatest downfall,” write Brinkley and Nichter, “was his lack of trust in subordinates.” The unfolding Watergate hearings, which would find Nixon’s counsel John Dean folding before investigators and would result in the near-sacrificial firing of some of his closest aides, occupied much of Nixon’s time and attention, even as he chalked up real accomplishments. Brinkley and Nichter preserve Nixon at his best and worst. About the only serious criticism to bring against the enterprise is the simple wish that they had annotated more, since as the events recede, fewer readers will be able to immediately identify what Nixon means when he refers to the bombings of Haiphong and interventions in Cambodia. Even without extensive commentary, however, this volume is endlessly fascinating, constantly raising questions about what might have been—and sometimes proving Nixon right, especially on the matter of trust.
Essential for students of late-20th-century American history and the Nixon presidency.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-61053-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
