On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigns because of criminal activity in connection with Watergate and flies to California. At noon that day, Gerald R. Ford becomes the 38th president of the United States.
It was left to Gerald Ford to heal a war-torn and scandal-ridden nation and to restore credibility to the presidency in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam. Few presidents have ever been asked to achieve so much in so little time against such great adversity.
In the 895 days that made up his term in office, he would deal with South Vietnam, North Korea, the Helsinki Accord, Cuba, the operational transfer of the Panama Canal, the death of Franco, the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia, public outrage at CIA misdeeds, the US Bicentennial, and Operation Paul Bunyan, a reassurance to South Koreans and a warning to North Koreans.
It is Graeme Mount’s belief that developments that changed the world took place when President Ford led the United States. In some of these, he was an instigator; in some, he reacted to events precipitated by others.
Making extensive use of the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, both the archives and the museum, Mount examines the very documents produced by President Ford, members of his cabinet, and the White House staff and through that examination offers a window on the world between August 1974 and January 1976 that provides new insights into a troubling period of US history and Ford’s role in guiding the nation through it.
Historian Graeme Mount is the author of some 13 books, including Chile and the Nazis (Black Rose, 2002) and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of Korea (Black Rose, 2004). He has, as well, written extensively on US/Canadian relations in An Introduction to Canadian-American Relations and Invisible and Inaudible in Washington.
