Scan barcode
fallooja's review against another edition
4.0
Really nice parallels with today's America and by extension the divide today... and by nice I mean horrifying of course.
woodlandglitter's review against another edition
4.0
It took me a long time to get through this one. I'm glad I read it, just to get a clearer picture of the malignancy that was Richard Nixon. What a dick.
jillreads77's review against another edition
4.0
I listened to this book, it's a 36 hours long. I was engaged through the whole book. The book covers from the early 1960's to the early 1970's. The early failures of Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. The riots and protests and use of fear and the idea of a silent majority are all covered. I felt such irritation at all the problems that were fracturing us then, still completely relevant and all consuming today. Health insurance, poverty, systemic racism, staying in power at any cost, police brutality, corruption, it's all in there. I was born in the late 70's, most of the information about this era has to be sought out, it wasn't ever mentioned in any of my high school or college courses. Perlstein presents the the history in an understandable and engaging way. I kept wanting to get back to hear more about the major players of the day and fill in more gaps in my knowledge of this era.
chamberk's review against another edition
5.0
What a massive book. I was initially terrified by its size, convinced it'd be a turgid tome. I was wrong - instead, I was fascinated by the politics of the 1960s and how closely they echoed today's politics.
The book has a dual focus: Nixon himself and the country he manipulated. Perlstein's depiction of society in the 1960s was both shocking and reassuring. It was shocking to see how America tore itself apart over issues like Vietnam and desegregation. It was reassuring because in comparison to today - which often seems like we are a nation full of crazies - America in the 1960s was so much worse. We may have birthers, Tea Partiers, and the like, but we have gotten better.
Since the 60s, we have been caught in the struggle between helping others and watching out for ourselves. No one saw this more clearly than Richard Nixon, and he was a master manipulator. I was slightly let down that the book didn't get into the Watergate hearings, but it did show how Nixon's paranoia led to the break-in at the DNC... in fact, it showed how Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg of Nixon's lies.
Finally, one fun aspect of the book is keeping an eye out for familiar faces - Karl Rove, for example, makes a memorable cameo. I also liked seeing Charles Colson's weaselly scheming, because he was the Baccalaureate speaker for my high school graduation. Oh, how things change... and how they stay the same.
The book has a dual focus: Nixon himself and the country he manipulated. Perlstein's depiction of society in the 1960s was both shocking and reassuring. It was shocking to see how America tore itself apart over issues like Vietnam and desegregation. It was reassuring because in comparison to today - which often seems like we are a nation full of crazies - America in the 1960s was so much worse. We may have birthers, Tea Partiers, and the like, but we have gotten better.
Since the 60s, we have been caught in the struggle between helping others and watching out for ourselves. No one saw this more clearly than Richard Nixon, and he was a master manipulator. I was slightly let down that the book didn't get into the Watergate hearings, but it did show how Nixon's paranoia led to the break-in at the DNC... in fact, it showed how Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg of Nixon's lies.
Finally, one fun aspect of the book is keeping an eye out for familiar faces - Karl Rove, for example, makes a memorable cameo. I also liked seeing Charles Colson's weaselly scheming, because he was the Baccalaureate speaker for my high school graduation. Oh, how things change... and how they stay the same.
gregbrown's review against another edition
5.0
Rick Perlstein is an amazing historian—capable of both marshaling a wealth of documentary evidence and arranging it into a coherent and gripping narrative. He's ostensibly telling a political narrative, but shines in being one of the few non-fiction writers I've ever read who really capture that ethereal feeling of cultural momentum (usually called the "zeitgeist"). His earlier book, Before the Storm, chronicled the rise of Goldwater before the 1964 election. It followed the activists determined to see him get the nomination, and led the reader through what was happening in the wider sphere of American culture (and why that made Goldwater seem angelic to some and deranged to others). While some were capable of shaping events—Clif White and LBJ among them—most others seemed carried along by them.
Nixonland, on the other hand, revolves around the psyche of its title character. Nixon, paranoid to the bone, was constantly striving for more power and haunted by the impression that others were plotting against him. As everyone knows, this eventually led to his undoing: commanding increasingly bold and decreasingly lawful activities that eventually came to a head in Watergate. But what people seem to have mostly forgotten is how Nixon got to be so powerful in the first place. It wasn't all by theft, but instead by rhetorically playing upon the internal divisions within America, amped up by the rise of civil rights movements and economic anxiety.
I'm not going to lie to you; this book is LONG, 750 pages before endnotes and a SOLID 750 pages at that. But it's such an excellent book, one that finally knits together all the subjects that have been covered piecemeal in books before or thoroughly defanged by sweeping & inoffensive pop-histories. This could easily become the definitive era's textbook, and the only thing standing in its way are the teeth.
Nixonland, on the other hand, revolves around the psyche of its title character. Nixon, paranoid to the bone, was constantly striving for more power and haunted by the impression that others were plotting against him. As everyone knows, this eventually led to his undoing: commanding increasingly bold and decreasingly lawful activities that eventually came to a head in Watergate. But what people seem to have mostly forgotten is how Nixon got to be so powerful in the first place. It wasn't all by theft, but instead by rhetorically playing upon the internal divisions within America, amped up by the rise of civil rights movements and economic anxiety.
I'm not going to lie to you; this book is LONG, 750 pages before endnotes and a SOLID 750 pages at that. But it's such an excellent book, one that finally knits together all the subjects that have been covered piecemeal in books before or thoroughly defanged by sweeping & inoffensive pop-histories. This could easily become the definitive era's textbook, and the only thing standing in its way are the teeth.
machen27's review against another edition
This doesn't feel like a book that one can casually read. It really demands more attention than I'm able to give it at this point, since it covers the political history that leads to Nixon's presidency.
However, in the parts I did read, I found the haunting suggestion in the title to be very much true, and the author does an excellent job carefully exploring not just the people and events, but the cultural moments that defined this lead up to Nixon's presidency.
However, in the parts I did read, I found the haunting suggestion in the title to be very much true, and the author does an excellent job carefully exploring not just the people and events, but the cultural moments that defined this lead up to Nixon's presidency.
flexmentallo's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Perhaps the best book about how we got to where we are today. Truly, we all live in Nixon’s shadow every day in this hellish nightmare word.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs
Moderate: Violence