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    One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon
    One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon
    One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon
    Audiobook13 hours

    One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

    Written by Tim Weiner

    Narrated by Holter Graham

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A shocking and riveting look at one of the most dramatic and disastrous presidencies in US history, from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Tim Weiner

    Based largely on documents declassified only in the last few years, One Man Against the World paints a devastating portrait of a tortured yet brilliant man who led the country largely according to a deep-seated insecurity and distrust of not only his cabinet and congress, but the American population at large. In riveting, tick-tock prose, Weiner illuminates how the Vietnam War and the Watergate controversy that brought about Nixon's demise were inextricably linked. From the hail of garbage and curses that awaited Nixon upon his arrival at the White House, when he became the president of a nation as deeply divided as it had been since the end of the Civil War, to the unprecedented action Nixon took against American citizens, who he considered as traitorous as the army of North Vietnam, to the infamous break-in and the tapes that bear remarkable record of the most intimate and damning conversations between the president and his confidantes, Weiner narrates the history of Nixon's anguished presidency in fascinating and fresh detail.

    A crucial new look at the greatest political suicide in history, One Man Against the World leaves us not only with new insight into this tumultuous period, but also into the motivations and demons of an American president who saw enemies everywhere, and, thinking the world was against him, undermined the foundations of the country he had hoped to lead.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJun 16, 2015
    ISBN9781427268372
    One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon
    Author

    Tim Weiner

    Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his reporting and writing on national security and intelligence. He covered the CIA, the war in Afghanistan, and crises and conflicts in fourteen nations for The New York Times. Weiner has taught history and writing at Princeton and Columbia. The Folly and the Glory is his sixth book.

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    Reviews for One Man Against the World

    4.5/5

    45 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The life of Richard Nixon is a subject about which historians never tire of finding something say, and ONE MAN AGAINST THE WORLD: THE TRAGEDY OF RICHARD NIXON, by Tim Weiner, is one of the better recent ones. This is not a “life and times” full out biography of the 37th President’s life and career chronicling the rise and fall, then rise and even greater fall again, but a hard look at the crimes that surrounded and led to the Watergate scandal. Weiner’s book is a relatively short – 300 pages and change – account of the man’s crimes and mendacity while in the White House, based on documents and tapes released in the 21st Century. The writing is tight; the chapters are of manageable length, broken down further into subsections that focus on particular illuminating events. Whenever possible Weiner lets Nixon’s own words make the case against him. It is quite a case indeed, starting with an account of how the Nixon campaign sabotaged LBJ’s effort to achieve a cease fire in the Vietnam War on the eve of the 1968 election; this amounted to rank treason, a crime that stained the new administration at its conception. Duplicity, especially when it came to Vietnam, was practiced from day one; so too a desire to thwart and destroy the endless enemies in Congress, the media, higher education and the streets that the Nixon White House saw on all sides. Weiner shows how the President governed with only a small circle of like minded aides in the Oval Office, ignoring most of his cabinet, while plotting secret bombing campaigns, black bag jobs, illegal wire taps, raising slush funds, and to use the IRS and the FBI for their political ends. The Houston Plan, Operation Gemstone, the Ellsburg break-in, and the burglary at the Democratic HQ at the Watergate Complex are recounted in damning detail; making it clear that all of it was done with the President’s tacit approval. One revelation that caught my attention was how the secret bombing of Cambodia was covered up by falsifying the flight records of B-52s used on the bombing runs; hardly the foundation for “Peace with Honor.” Nixon believed the Kennedys had stolen the Presidency from him in 1960, and had spied on his campaign for Governor of California in 1962, so he was justified in his actions – a self serving rationalization if there ever was one. Then there were Nixon’s minions that were in it up to their necks: John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Dean, Charles Colson, Jeb Magruder, Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, and the rest. The picture of Henry Kissinger that emerges in these pages is far different than the one of esteemed elder statesman.But the most damning portrait that emerges is of Nixon himself. On the public stage, the man was the very portrait of pious rectitude, the defender of the Silent Majority’s traditional American values, standing firm against the long hairs and elitists who supported the Viet Cong abroad, and sympathized with drug dealing criminals at home. Weiner shows us the foul mouthed, prejudiced, corrupt, over bearing man who came out behind closed doors when no one was listening but his palace guard, and the tape recorder that preserved his damning words for the ages. Weiner also touches on Nixon’s excessive drinking, and confirms that he was passed out in the White House family quarters and took no part in an October 1973 NSC meeting where American armed forces were put on a worldwide alert because the Soviets were shipping nuclear warheads to Egypt during the Yom Kippur War. Nixon was a capable statesman, one who recognized the futility of the Cold War, and tried to do something about it, but one cannot help but come to the conclusion that his corruption tainted everything.This book is best read by those already familiar with the details of Nixon’s life and Presidency, as Weiner does spend much time on back story and background. I would recommend Rick Perlstein’s NIXONLAND and THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE for the uninitiated, as it covers much of the same period and subject, but with a wealth more of detail. Tim Weiner’s book is truly informative, and makes the case against Richard Nixon in full. It was a tragedy, for the man, and for the country, but sadly, for anyone who has lived through the last half of the second decade of the 21st Century, we must say that we have now seen worse.
    • 4/5
      Many books have been written on Nixon, including a number of recent titles prompted by the release of the last of the tapes of his White House conversations in 2013. Few will better this concise but well written journalistic history.
      Nixon will always be a fascinating figure who did more than any individual to undermine the Presidency of the US. At times I felt that surely Weiner was being selective and only focusing on the negatives. That may be true, but any diplomatic or economic feats would not overcome the corruption, arrogance and abuse of power clearly conveyed in these pages in Nixon's own words. The tapes, his notes and his aid Haldeman's diary provide fascinating sources without which the events of the Nixon presidency could and would be dismissed as fantasy. An extraordinary story well told.
    • 4/5
      Richard Nixon was a legitimately terrifying human being. Triply so because he was president. I never figured him for a super great guy, but the Nixon depicted in this book is clinically paranoid, petty and far more vindictive than he has any right to be. You need a little background for this book, which is the only reason I left off a star - it's an accounting of the secrets that have come out of Nixon's presidency only in this millennium as the secret tapes and documents have been made public.

      In a weird way, Nixon was right: It's far better for the United States that the things he did, said and thought were kept from people. However, the ultimate tragedy (for Nixon, sure, but for the rest of us as well) is that it's only true because Nixon was given power - if he weren't so awful, we wouldn't have needed the secrecy.
    • 5/5
      Now that all of Nixon’s tapes and documents have finally been released to the public, we get to see who Nixon really was, and it is a terrifying portrait! The author follows the political history of a man who became president through hard work, a little luck and lots of sordid deeds. He is a man who trusted no one, including his staff and “friends.” His desire to extricate the country from the losing war in Vietnam “without losing” caused him to make many disastrous errors in judgment, ones that ultimately caused the collapse of his presidency. The author shows how Nixon’s personality, the situation in Vietnam and the crimes associated with Watergate, which was more than a simply burglary attempt at the DNC headquarters, were related. I was never a Nixon fan, and now I feel more justified than ever about my opinions regarding him as a president and as a man.
    • 5/5
      Very well written journalism. Native journalistic intelligence vs acedemic intelligence. Fast paced and well thought out and designed. Timely since it is based on freedom of information data made available in the last two years. Spends most of focus on Vietnam, US protesters ( the real enemy - his own people), China, Russia and Kissinger. The man was a true psychopath and he was in charge of our country. and yet it seems we have learned nothing from this as one looks at the upcoming elections.
    • 5/5
      A concise (about one-fifth the size of President Nixon's edited transcripts releases in April 1974) but detailed re-telling of the underside of the Nixon presidency. As Mr Weiner writes in his Author's Note, "For those who lived under Nixon, it is worse than you recollect. For those too young to recall, it is worse than you can imagine" (p.4).