Customer Reviews

Blind Ambition: The End of the Story

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John Dean was 31 years old when Richard Nixon appointed him White House Counsel. Blind Ambition is clearly one of a handful of the most incisive, insightful books to have arisen from the Watergate Crisis. It has been reissued with a wonderful addendum after decades of being out of print. It is beautifully written, strikingly transparent - a brutally self-revelatory vision from a key player inside Nixon's White House.

Dean was the first major participant in Watergate to go to the prosecutors and testify about Watergate. He was hero to a few, vilified by many. The book reveals a character of great depth, complexity and reflection. The book serves not only as a fascinating chronicle of Watergate (with appearances by all the big characters in the Watergate drama, including Mark Felt, Assistant FBI Director "Deep Throat"), but also an astute psychological profile of a complex system, highlighting drives to power, ambition, recognition, delving into agonies of pain, paranoia, and an ultimate restructuring of an ethical sense.

Dean's Blind Ambition transcends the Watergate genre. Most of the early treatments by the primary characters are staggeringly self-serving. Dean's more subtle reflections increase the general applicability of the book.

I have to laugh as each conspiracy book comes out and defends Nixon as a victim of Dean.

Throw out everything and listen to the Watergate tapes....Dean is completely vindicated. Gordon Liddy, James Rosen and other wingnuts all twist the meaning of what was said into some kind of warped alternate history.

Nixon knew he was recorded, Dean only figured it out later...given that simple premise, it's logical to conclude Dean was trying to help Nixon get out of the mess.

But, wingnuts being wingnuts...nothing is their own fault, everything is a left-wing plot and, once again, liberals are destroying the country.

You know what? Sometimes people like Nixon are just arrogant politicians who get themselves in trouble.

It's really simple and alternate versions of history are just excuses to sell books...the power of the dollar over the power of a recorded conversation.

Slaughterhouse is the best adjective to describe the inner workings of the Nixon Administration as portrayed in John Dean's superlative account. I was a young man when the Watergate hearings were broadcast in 1973 and very much remember John Dean's testimony before Congress. Sadly, it has taken me this long to actually read his book but I am much more mture at 59 than at 21. At that time I believed justice had been done; that the 'system' worked--I no longer believe this myth. While Richard Nixon was a somewhat unusual president, considering his odd quirky nature, and had a stellar cast of misfits as his chief operatives-Colson, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman-I do not think he was really out of the ordinary in his operational tactics. What Dean's book does is illuminate the reality of American politics-then, and now; there is no essential difference.
John F. Kennedy once wrote that he considered politics a noble and essential activity. I have long since abandoned this belief and baldly state that politics is strictly for either the naive or the self-serving--it is, in fact, ignoble and dishonest. It enriches the few and solves nothing. I cannot but help view all politicians as a lesser breed--ill-educated buffoons(legal training hardly qualifies as an education in the broad sense)who lack imagination and are ethically challenged. They are Untermenschen who deserve our contempt. They would better serve the public in a labor camp.
I admire Dean for his honesty and as a amateur historian with a fascination for Richard Nixon I highly recommend his book. Consider it a manual of what NOT to pursue as a career. (This is a review of the Kindle version of this book.)

Simply put...this is the very best book detailing what watergate truly was, and also the best insiders point of view as things unfolded. I consider myself a huge watergate buff and have read books by just about every person involved, and again, this one tops them all. You won't put the book down as it is literally one that has you on edge the whole time. John Dean provides a great first hand account on what watergate was, everyone's roles in it(including his own), and why it happened. What's also neat is him talking about W. Mark Felt aka "DeepThroat" just in normal terms, because Felt obviously hadn't been identified as DeepThroat unti almost three decades after this book. A phenomenal book recommended to any watergate followers.

John Dean is such a brave man. i admire his courage. the book was AMAZING. Thank you John for writing it!

John Dean has done a real service again in humanizing the dirty side of politics. These guys always appear as normal people, yet they diminish the character and relevance of those who do serve honorably.
After reading his other works, I really ask what these conservatives think is so important that the rest of the country should pay any attention to anything said by these loose cannons. Let's give them an abandoned reservation and let them live to their deregulated delights.