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A review by epersonae
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein
5.0
I have a weird personal obsession with Nixon-related history, based in three tidbits of personal history:
# My grandmother was briefly in elementary school with Nixon, possibly in the 2nd grade.
# I was born the day he was pardoned.
# One of the better memories from the first years after dad died was asking Mom what Watergate was, when I saw a "Watergate Motel" while we were driving home from Disneyland, while I was staying up to help her stay awake on the drive. (After that, I borrowed her copy of All the President's Men. I think I was 11.)
So of course I snagged this pretty much as soon as I heard about it...or at least as soon as my turn came up at the library.
A fantastic book! Partially about Nixon, partially about the whole division of the culture that happened in the 60s & 70s, and how it burst into damn near open warfare. Clearly written, thoughtful, funny, disturbing. As usual, Nixon himself comes off as a nut, but within a nutty culture.
The strangest thing for me in this book was the birth in MYSELF of renewed hope for the future. The point being that we survived all that: cities on FIRE for DAYS, for god's sake. The sense of apocalypse that seems to have filled the air hasn't gone away, for sure, but we (as a culture) lived through that, we ought to be able to live through this. It's not a point the author deliberately makes; in fact, one of his points is that our culture still lives in the us vs. them world of Nixonland. But it's the conclusion that struck me most.
Highly, highly recommended. (For extra surrealism, try reading while laying on a beach on a lazy afternoon.)
# My grandmother was briefly in elementary school with Nixon, possibly in the 2nd grade.
# I was born the day he was pardoned.
# One of the better memories from the first years after dad died was asking Mom what Watergate was, when I saw a "Watergate Motel" while we were driving home from Disneyland, while I was staying up to help her stay awake on the drive. (After that, I borrowed her copy of All the President's Men. I think I was 11.)
So of course I snagged this pretty much as soon as I heard about it...or at least as soon as my turn came up at the library.
A fantastic book! Partially about Nixon, partially about the whole division of the culture that happened in the 60s & 70s, and how it burst into damn near open warfare. Clearly written, thoughtful, funny, disturbing. As usual, Nixon himself comes off as a nut, but within a nutty culture.
The strangest thing for me in this book was the birth in MYSELF of renewed hope for the future. The point being that we survived all that: cities on FIRE for DAYS, for god's sake. The sense of apocalypse that seems to have filled the air hasn't gone away, for sure, but we (as a culture) lived through that, we ought to be able to live through this. It's not a point the author deliberately makes; in fact, one of his points is that our culture still lives in the us vs. them world of Nixonland. But it's the conclusion that struck me most.
Highly, highly recommended. (For extra surrealism, try reading while laying on a beach on a lazy afternoon.)