A review by unionmack
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein

5.0

This book is a behemoth but it's a worthwhile mountain to climb. Perlstein checks all the boxes for what I want out of a biography / history book. I'd put this in the same sphere as McCullough's work on John Adams or Chernow's on Alexander Hamilton. The thing I've loved most about reading presidential biographies during the Trump era is that they really remind you history is always tumultuous and that everyone of any era thinks they're probably living at the end of the world. For what it's worth, our current situation feels like a dim shadow of the events detailed in this book. I'll have to pick up another book to read about the final chapters of Watergate and Nixon's life post-presidency but I think Perlstein's decision to end the book with his reelection in '72 felt like the perfect conclusion to his project. Looking forward to eventually reading his stuff on Reagan and Goldwater too. Definitely check this out if you've got some time to kill and an interest in Nixon, our continuously fragile and frighteningly shaky political system, or the late '60s / early '70s in general. For that matter, if you're a biography / history nut at all, I imagine you'll enjoy this a lot.