For anyone fascinated by the only president in history to resign from office, Richard Nixon in his own words provides the first-hand account of the reasons for the events that triggered a national civil and presidential history crisis. "I saw Watergate as politics pure and simple," Nixon writes, adding he'd "play it tough" because his "enemies" would. But Nixon's downfall is put a part of this extensively written memoir, focusing also on the ex-president's incredible achievements as a peacemaker and his rise to national recognition as a fervent anti-Communist and his about-face in reaching out to the world's two most powerful communist countries (China and the former Soviet Union) once in office. Much of Nixon's own memories have been written in other publications, but this one adds (to a very limited degree) some reasons for the abstracts that were Richard Nixon. He tells us the night of his first presidential race loss to John F. Kennedy was the longest of his life, hinting that the election embittered him the rest of his public life. Yet, 12 years later, in 1972, when he was overwhelmingly endorsed by the American public in one of history's most lopsided presidential races, Nixon admittedly was unable to savor the mandate of the nation's choice, instead caught in some inexplicable dark mood caused by, Nixon profers, the looming storm of Watergate, his party's failure to wrest the House and Senate from the Democrats, or whatever else was at the core of the very man himself. Nixon, in his own words, is a mandatory addition to any Nixon library, and its historical value is apparent even if the reader disagrees with the man's explanation for some of the petty characteristics that brought down what may well have been one of the most productive presidential administrations in history.
