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| Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America | 
 enlarge | Author: Rick Perlstein
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $37.50
Buy New: $16.95
You Save: $20.55 (55%)
New (46) Used (14) Collectible (1) from $15.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 772
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Scribner Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 896
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 2
ISBN: 0743243021
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.924
EAN: 9780743243025
ASIN: 0743243021
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New - may have a small remainder mark on the edge.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Informative, detailed and energetic June 9, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
After almost a month, I finally finished reading Nixonland last Thursday. It's truly a remarkable book.
For starters, I never learned about this stuff in school -- not in American history or civics during high school, or during any of the political science courses I took during college (granted, the WNMU courses weren't geared that way, but still). Yeah, the major stuff was covered: it's kind of hard to skip the Kennedy and King assasinations, Vietnam, McCarthyism, and Watergate. However, while I've picked up a lot of the themes over the years, never before have I had such an excellent resource on the era. Rick Perlstein lays it all out in meticulous detail, but in a narrative so lively you don't want to stop reading.
The book is 748 pages long, and aside from some time on the beach I read it exclusively during my 45-minute commute: first on the bus, then on the blue-line train. Often, I just kept it out for the 7-block walk to the office, reading while avoiding pedestrians and traffic. It was that good.
Nixon is the plot device Perlstein uses to explore the radicalization of the left and the backlash of the right; the lies used to sell an unpopular war; and the racial tensions that led to riots and the rise of the Southern Strategy. The story is about so much more than Nixon, but he's inexorably the focus: he played such a role in shaping the debates of that time (and today) that you can't tell the story but through the Nixon lens.
The parallels between that generation and my own are stark yet unsurprising: the political forces have remained unchanged, while the players may have changed. Still, familiar names (especially on the GOP side) like Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove, and George Bush are spread throughout the tome.
Though I kept reading about the origins of todays political debates, I finished the book thinking the next generation will have moved past them. So many of my personal and professional relationships are completely online: I've never met these friends and colleagues, and yet my "collected life" is but a foreshadowing of those being built by teenagers across the country. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I think things like race will play less of a role in the future as more people interact over new media.
I might have more on this later, but for now, take my word on it: read Nixonland. You'll come away from it with a better understanding of our history, and why today's political conversations are framed the way they are.
"Happiness is Nixon" June 16, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
As he did with his first book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001), popular historian Rick Perlstein has created a memorable portrait of a legendary political figure by exploring the culture of his subject's times. The author has chosen to focus on the years 1965 through 1972, capturing Nixon's phoenix-like rise from has-been to twice-elected President. It is a refreshing period for Perlstein to write about because the world was not exactly crying out for another book on Nixon's second term demise.
Nixonland is a great book for the political junkie who thinks he or she knows everything there is to know about the 37th President of the United States and the times in which he campaigned and governed. The wild ride of a description of the 1972 GOP Convention in Miami Beach, Florida is representative of some of the disparate facts Perlstein corrals into his entertaining and highly readable narrative. Who knew or who remembers that Stanley Livingston (who played the incredibly bland teen "Chip" on the long-running TV series "My Three Sons") pitched in for the Nixon cause? Or that police had sprayed so much Mace around the convention center that the air conditioning had to be turned off (which in turn caused Jimmy Stewart to sweat profusely when introducing a film on First Lady Pat Nixon)? Or that John Wayne introduced the campaign infomercial about the President?
The 1972 Convention chapter also contains an example of how Perlstein is able to reference earlier, pivotal events in his subject's career and convey the repetitive (and often cynical) nature of politics. The passage involves Nixon's rhetorical use of a war-orphaned 12-year-old Russian diarist named "Tanya" (she recounts in her diary her familial loss during WWII) in a Checkers-like speech that called fro a thaw in the Cold War.
Perlstein's ambitious and lengthy book (nearly 900 pages) has hundreds of characters and anecdotes that may well whet the reader's appetite to do more reading on some of the points that are only briefly touched upon. For example, it is intriguing to read about a young Karl Rove's induction into big time campaign work (With a mentor like Donald Segretti, is it any surprise that Mr. Rove wound up going so far in Republican politics?). And Perlstein's description of the curative powers of Up with People! (the peppy, patriotic and youthful singing battalion) as sourced from a 1967 Reader's Digest article is strange enough to make one want to go to the public library and read the original article (in it a Watts rioter who saw an Up with People! show was so moved by their inspiring message that he tried to make amends for his looting crimes). And are just a couple of examples from many. The point is that while much of Perlstein's book may be derived from secondary sources, he has an undeniable knack for choosing details that truly enliven the history that he is writing about. His writing style is engaging and often so observationally humorous that it elicited chuckles from this reviewer. However, there are other times where a too-cute-by-half reference prompts groans (one Buffalo Springfield song title invocation is especially painful). But on the whole, Nixonland is a welcome and unique addition to the Nixon bibliography and one well worth reading for pleasure or for serious study.
By the way, the headline blurb for this review ("Happiness is Nixon") comes from one of the campaign buttons found at the 1972 Republican Convention that Perlstein describes in the book. Other souvenir buttons from '72 included "Nixon is Love" and "Nixon Cares." There was also a McGovern boxing figure accessorized with a white flag of surrender on sale at the convention hall. Was this Rove's idea?
 Did not live through this time? Then not a good book for you. June 24, 2008
3 out of 17 found this review helpful
I found that too many times events were mentioned and the aftermath was surmised, but the actual event was never described. There were many assumptions made by the author that the person reading this book already knows the era.
Couldn't put it down June 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is just a terrific read. Almost every page has some shocking or outrageous detail: Nixon is bugging Kissinger, the Secretaries of State and Defense have to find out about administration policy by reading the newspapers, Mayor Daley is raiding McCarthy headquarters with police, hardhats are charging peaceniks during their lunch hours, the horrible killer Lt. Calley was getting 2000 letters of fan mail a day; it was probably the sickest, most dangerous era we've ever been through. Some pages had me laughing out loud about the endless insanity and corruption, some pages just shaking my head and thinking what a miracle it is that we came through that era with our democracy intact.
I lived through it but there is so much I have forgotten. I was at Washington University in the late 1960's but I forgot that they burned the ROTC down, twice, and I was in Chicago in 1968 but not in the battle zone. I do remember the horrible phone calls that filled the radio shows after the Kent State killings; the hatred people had for those who protested was unimaginable to me then and still is. One detail that the author doesn't mention is that one of those four innocent students killed at Kent State was an ROTC member and another was just a student going to class. But that didn't stop people from filling up the air waves with hatred or giving Lt. Calley, who murdered hundreds of innocent people in cold blood, a huge approval rating.
Can you imagine the president sponsoring and funding a burglary ring operating out the White House today? The burglaries actually achieved nothing, but the endless acts of sabotage of the campaigns of the Democrats in 1972, which made it almost impossible for them to present their message, were a hideous assault on our democracy. The ironic thing was that Nixon wanted to do so many other more drastic things to destroy his political opponents, like big time IRS audits, that even his criminal subordinates got cold feet.
In 1968 Nixon posed as a candidate with a plan for peace (like Eisenhower in 1952) while actually he was sabotaging the peace talks in Paris, telling the South Vietnamese to hold out and he'd get them a better deal. What I just can't understand is how the people could see their sons sent off to a senseless war for so many more years after it became clear that Nixon had no plan to end the war, and why people as a whole just stood by while literally hundreds of thousands of totally innocent civilians in Laos, Cambodia, North and South Vietnam were killed in senseless bombing.
The real theme of this book, as I see it, is what was wrong with us. How did we ever let a guy like this in the Presidency, let alone re-elect him? And why were we so intolerant and so filled with malice toward those who disagreed with us? Maybe it's no exaggeration to say that we owe our democracy today to a burglar on the White House payroll named McCord who was so inept that he taped the locks on the doors within the Watergate horizontally instead of vertically so that the security guard noticed the tape and called the police (who finally responded the second time).
More than a story about Nixon, this is the story of an era June 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Earlier this month the New York Times Book Review asked a wide range of American writers what books they would recommend to the then three remaining candidates for President of the United States. Suggested titles ranged from classical literature such as ANNA KARENINA to books on health care and economics. Conspicuous by its inclusion as one of the few contemporary books on American politics was NIXONLAND by Rick Perlstein. It is an epic recounting of the political era that spanned the final third of the 20th century and continues to leave its footprint on our nation's politics and the forthcoming presidential election.
Perlstein has become a respected historian of the post-World War II American political scene. In 2001 he authored BEFORE THE STORM: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. As the title reflects, the focus was on the 1964 election battle between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. At the time, Johnson's landslide victory appeared to signal the beginning of a second New Deal era for American liberalism. But within one national election cycle, liberalism was on the wane and the movement nurtured by Goldwater seized control of American politics. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush would be the beneficiaries of the Goldwater movement. While Nixon's political career pre-dated the conservative movement, the political vacuum created by Goldwater's defeat also made possible Nixon's political rebirth.
The members of Nixon's political generation were the products of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Those experiences tempered their political philosophy and created a Republican Party that was forced to eschew economic policies identified with Herbert Hoover. Domestic politics was what elected Democrats, and Republicans were forced to become a party that built its foundation upon anti-communism. Nixon was a master at this game; using that platform he was elected first to the House of Representatives, then to the U.S. Senate and finally became Vice President. Narrowly defeated for President in 1960 by John F. Kennedy, he returned to California to seek the Governor's office in 1962. His defeat in that election resulted in his famous bitter concession when he lambasted the media and announced, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." Those words, however, were a lie, and he immediately began to plot his return to the national political stage.
But despite its title, NIXONLAND encompasses far more than the story of our 37th President. After the election of 1964, the cadre of voters who had previously been faithful supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal began to leave the party. Perlstein argues that white middle-class dissatisfaction with crime, civil rights and economic woes made Republicans out of a critical mass of Democrats. Nixon exploited that anger and political disenchantment with his "Southern Strategy" of 1968. Reagan and both President Bushes refined his work to cement a solid Republican political majority.
More than a book about politics, NIXONLAND is a brilliant narrative of the entire social, political and cultural history of an era that began with optimism after World War II and turned into post-war cynicism with Vietnam. The events of the '60s and '70s --- the politics, riots, wars and assassinations --- are detailed in an exquisite style.
Political upheavals such as the elections of 1912, 1932, 1964 and 1972 are often difficult to pinpoint with accuracy. Indeed, historians frequently must identify these cataclysmic events years after the fact. While Perlstein suggests that the political revolution detailed in NIXONLAND may remain with us for another generation, there are signs that he may be incorrect. It remains to be seen whether the election of 2008 between the hopeful politics of Barack Obama and the old politics of John McCain will emerge victorious. Perlstein will be ready to offer his analysis in a future political history, for which readers can be grateful.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
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