Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man [Paperback]

Garry Wills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2002

From one of America's most distinguished historians comes this classic analysis of Richard Nixon. By considering some of the president's opinions, Wills comes to the controversial conclusion that Nixon was actually a liberal. Both entertaining and essential, Nixon Agonistes captures a troubled leader and a struggling nation mired in a foolish Asian war, forfeiting the loyalty of its youth, puzzled by its own power, and looking to its cautious president for confidence. In the end, Nixon Agonistes reaches far beyond its assessment of the thirty-seventh president to become an incisive and provocative analysis of the American political machine.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Astonishing . . . a stunning attempt to possess that past, that we may all of us escape it." -- John Leonard, New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

GARRY WILLS, a distinguished historian and critic, is the author of numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg, Saint Augustine, and the best-selling Why I Am a Catholic. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he has won many awards, among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. He is a history professor emeritus at Northwestern University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (November 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618134328
• ISBN-13: 978-0618134328
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( N ) > Nixon, Richard

More About the Author

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forgotten masterpiece, July 28, 1998

By 

Stanley Allen (League City, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Hardcover)

It's too bad that this book is out of print. Probably it stopped selling because of its title -- people must have assumed that it was only relevant for the Nixon era. Not so! The book is valuable today for the evocation of the early part of that time (especially the summer of 1968), but more than that, it is a masterful analysis of that collection of shared intellectual assumptions that make up a great deal of American political (and other) impulses -- specifically, that set of post-Lockean interpretations of social, moral, economic and political life which fall under the rubric of "liberalism". Wills details the connection between Nixon and this background, and the results are far-ranging. Many of the great American assumptions about life are implicated and their mythical foundations revealed: equality of economic opportunity, electoral "mandates", democracy via fair elections in countries that do not have them, fair competition of ideas in academia, and others. Wills leaves no stone unturned. The book deserves to be reprinted again.

Original review above was July 1998; Below added Jan 2003:
Hurrah! It's back in print! Get your copy before it disappears again!

I should have mentioned that, in addition to the fun of watching Wills dismantle the superstructure of liberalism, the book provides great pleasure through its style. Wills writes non-fiction better than most poets write sonnets.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent biography of Nixon and history of Presidential power, June 12, 2006

By 

Michael E. McCarthy "Mac" (Castro Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Paperback)

A colleague just asked me if this is an apologia of Nixon - it is not. I read this and most of the other burst of books that came out in the 1970s right after Watergate, and they were all great reads, especially with the fire of those times still burning -- and Nixon Agonistes was one of the enduring best, engrossing and well rounded. Nixon was a peculiar character but Wills does a good job of being the good historian, with balance and insight. And as I say, it was engrossing -- I read it all the way through. College poly-sci majors in particular should add this to their must-read list.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where are the journalists of yesteryear?, February 5, 2011

By 

Stuart Thiel (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Paperback)

I just discovered this fabulous book. The title suggests it's about Nixon, but really it's a first-rough-draft analysis of the Sixties. How could a young punk like Garry Wills understand the chaos of 1968 so well that now, forty years later, his analysis holds up well?

Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson are flamboyant, easy reads. Reading Garry Wills is more like reading epic poetry. You have to work at it, but it's worth it.

They had some great journalists in those days. Too bad we didn't have their like during the Bush years.