King Richard

December 1, 2020

To write King Richard, a chronicle of the Watergate conspiracy, veteran Washington Post reporter Dobbs (One Minute to Midnight) drew on thousands of hours of newly released taped recordings. New York Times best-selling author of The Secret Game, Ellsworth heads back to his hometown in The Ground Breaking to report on the reopened investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre and reckon with its consequences. Guinn's War on the Border recounts Pancho Villa's blood-soaked raid on a small U.S. border town and Gen. John J. Pershing's Punitive Expedition, a retaliatory gesture (75,000-copy first printing). From Schulman, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the College of Staten Island and codirector of the ACT UP Oral History Project, Let the Record Show is a two-decades-in-the-making history of ACT UP's AIDSs advocacy. New York Times best-selling author White examines the 16th president's personal notes and jottings to show us Lincoln in Private.

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Starred review from December 21, 2020
The unraveling of Richard Nixon’s presidency plays out in intimate detail in this vivid recreation of a key period in the Watergate scandal. Drawing on recently released tapes from Nixon’s secret White House recording system, historian Dobbs (The Unwanted) focuses on the six months between Nixon’s second inauguration, when he was riding high from his 1972 reelection landslide and peace treaty with North Vietnam, and July 17, 1973, when the press first reported on the existence of the recording devices, setting him on the path to resignation in August 1974. It’s a gripping story of decline under pressure as Nixon and his aides confront mounting extortion demands from the Watergate burglars—“You could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten,” Nixon assures White House counsel John Dean in a discussion of hush-money procedures—and grow increasingly desperate and fractious as investigators close in. Dobbs skillfully quotes from the tapes to paint colorful, nuanced portraits of White House yes-men, a manipulative Henry Kissinger, and a Nixon who is vulnerable, melancholy, paranoid, and vengeful. (“We’re going to kill them... if it’s the last thing I do in this office,” he seethes about his media detractors.) The result is an indelible study of a political antihero. Photos. Agent: Raphael Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn.

May 1, 2021

The 1972 Watergate scandal remains a defining moment of the American presidency and the political system itself. Revelations from journalism, scholarship, memoirs, and President Richard Nixon's tapes have left little unknown about the scandal. But in this well-researched account, journalist Dobbs draws on recently released tapes to provide additional context for now infamous events--the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, and the wiretapping of the organization's offices. The denials and cover-up of these events led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974. A timeline helps readers keep track of the various political players involved, from the Committee to Re-elect the President; to investigators like Patrick Gray, tasked with uncovering the crime; to reporters like Helen Thomas, working to relay details to the public. The strength of the work stems from Dobbs's bringing lesser-known events into clear focus, such as John Dean's testimony before a senate committee. Included are archival photographs of Nixon during his time in office. VERDICT Spanning biography and history, this is a gripping narrative and a fine account of events in the presidency. Recommended for readers unfamiliar with Watergate or in need of a refresher.--Zachary Irwin, formerly with Penn State Behrend

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Starred review from March 15, 2021
According to journalist and historian Dobbs (One Minute to Midnight, 2009), the tragedy of Richard Nixon's Presidency ranks with that of the protagonists of ancient Greek drama. He sets this history of the Watergate scandal as a theater piece, beginning with a dramatis personae and organizing his chapters as acts of a play: Hubris, Crisis, Catastrophe, and Catharsis. One by one, he narrates events of each day of the scandal, starting with Nixon's 1973 Inauguration Day. Drawing on audio tapes that the President kept of his meetings and conversations, Dobbs moves the story from the first moments of the cover-up through the Washington Post's reportage up to the moment when circumstances overtake the White House and force Nixon to dismiss his most loyal aides and supporters. Dobbs focuses sharply on Nixon and his immediate circle (Erlichman, Haldeman, Dean), leaving Congressional hearings and investigations as background, and concluding before Spiro Agnew's own legal troubles became headlines. This is a compelling, moment-by-moment narrative, psychological as much as political, offering a sense of intimacy with the beleaguered Nixon without mawkishness. Includes photographs and a bibliography.

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Starred review from April 1, 2021
A seasoned journalist tackles one of the most notorious political scandals in American history. In his latest, self-described "presidential crisis historian" Dobbs, former Washington Post reporter and author of a trilogy of nonfiction books about the Cold War, delivers a spellbinding account of the 100 days following Richard Nixon's second inaugural. Fresh off one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history, the president went right back to work waging "all-out war against his political enemies" and trying to secure his legacy of brokered peace with Vietnam and the opening of relations with China. As the weeks passed, however, details emerged about break-ins at Democratic National Committee headquarters, prompting the burglars and their handlers in the administration to turn on each other as paranoia set in. To this day, there is no conclusive proof that Nixon directly ordered the espionage, but "there is little doubt that he set in motion the chain of events" that led to it. Divided into four "acts," this masterful book and its title summon the Shakespearean tragedy in which the most powerful man in the world built himself up and then self-destructed. Familiar actors in this drama, which never seems to lose its excitement across the decades, include G. Gordon Liddy, John Dean, Jeb Magruder, and H.R. Haldeman. Of course, the primary focus is Nixon, the son of poor Southern California Quakers who rose to the nation's highest office only to leave forever disgraced. Dobbs admits that his book is not meant to be an exhaustive account like Stanley Kutler's The Wars of Watergate. Rather, the author delivers an intimate, engrossing picture of Nixon as a visionary man "obsessed with privacy and solitude," an affectionate husband and father, and a gut-fighting outsider mystified by power and all its trappings, styling himself as a kind of blend of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles de Gaulle. A riveting portrait of ambition, hubris, betrayal, and the downfall of an American president.

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