rokvm.blogg.se

As early as 1947, in his first congressional race, Nixon publicly smeared his opponent as a secret communist, setting a pattern for subsequent campaigns. Yet Graff's writing sparkles with respect to Nixon's psychological backstory - the story now so familiar to Americans, about deceit, paranoia and secrecy. combat presence in Vietnam, overseeing successful ballistic missile negotiations with the Soviet Union and coproducing landmark eco law. The author conveys Nixon's paradigm-shifting presidential policy achievements: outreach to mainland China, ending the U.S. House and Senate and for eight years as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, he was well prepared for the presidency.

No mistake: More than most presidents and unlike the disgraced recent president to whom he's often compared, Nixon was a bright and knowledgeable guy who broadly understood the nation's ills and its foreign roles and responsibilities. Graff portrays Nixon's background fairly and transparently. He has served on Vermont Public Radio's Board of Directors and currently sits on the Burlington Housing Authority's Board of Commissioners.

As a high school student in Montpelier, he was governor Howard Dean's first webmaster in 2004, he made history with Dean's masterful internet-based presidential campaign. Graff's national résumé is impressive, including editorial leadership at magazines Politico and Washingtonian and multiple acclaimed best sellers. If you're among the latter, a warning: Get a tablet with a glare-proof screen, because the book itself, at more than 800 pages, is hard to hold and makes a digital reader indispensable. Instead, the book is a crime drama, a pirate tale, a mystery, a character study, a spy story and a Greek tragedy, disguised as Pulitzer Prize-level historiography.Īs he did in his spellbinding oral history of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky (2019), Graff methodically assembles facts, perspectives, activities, analysis, anecdotes and interpretations into a seamless, engaging book that will hold the attention of scholars, college students and beach readers alike. Vermont author Graff covers Watergate as anything but a pedagogical, dry-as-dust scholar's subject. The book is a crime drama, a pirate tale, a mystery, a character study, a spy story and a Greek tragedy.