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Nixon Agonistes
  
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Nixon Agonistes (Paperback)

~ (Author) "FEBRUARY 1968: It is early morning in Wisconsin, in Appleton, air heavy with the rot of wood pulp..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, White House, United States (more...)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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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
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.


Product Description

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. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Product Details

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Signet (April 3, 1979)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0451621484
  • ISBN-13: 978-0451621481
  • Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,875,735 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Garry Wills
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First Sentence:
FEBRUARY 1968: It is early morning in Wisconsin, in Appleton, air heavy with the rot of wood pulp. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, White House, United States, Richard Nixon, Los Angeles, Woodrow Wilson, Republican Party, South Vietnam, Horatio Alger, Lyndon Johnson, New Left, Towson State, Bay of Pigs, Billy Graham, Father Cronin, Latin America, New Hampshire, Supreme Court, Adlai Stevenson, Grant Park, Robert Kennedy, San Francisco, Whittier College, Civic Center, Clif White
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4 Reviews
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4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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25 of 28 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.

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11 of 11 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 M. 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.
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8 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Dark Side of The American Spirit , December 8, 2007
This review is from: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Paperback)
The English poet and Cromwellian revolutionary John Milton had his Samson struggling against forces that he did not understand and that in the end he was unable to overcome. Professor Wills in his seminal contemporaneous study of the career through his successful run in 1968, up close and personal, of one Richard Milhous Nixon, former President of the United, common criminal and currently resident of one of Dante's Circles of Hell tries to place the same spin on the vices and virtues of this modern "Everyman".

Wills takes us through Nixon's hard scrabble childhood, the formative Quaker background in sunny California, the post World War II start of Nixon's rapidly advancing hard anti-communist political career, his defeats for president in 1960 by John Kennedy and for California governor in 1962 by Pat Brown and his resurrection in 1968 against Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey. And through his discourse, as is his habit, Professor Wills seemingly writes about every possible interpretation of his rise to power and what Nixon symbolized on the American political landscape. If one has a criticism of Wills it is exactly this sociological overkill to make a point but make your own judgment on this one as you read through this tract.

However, as well written and well researched as this exposition is it will just not wash. Nixon knew what the score was at all times and in all places so that unlike old Samson there was no question of his not understanding. As Wills points out Nixon had an exceptional grasp of the `dark side' of the American spirit in the middle third of the 20th century and he pumped that knowledge for all it was worth. Moreover, rather than cry over his self-imposed fate one should understand that Nixon liked it that way. There is no victim here of overwhelming and arbitrary circumstances clouding his fate.

It is perhaps hard for those who were not around then, or older folks who have forgotten, just what Nixon meant as a villainous political target to those of us of the Generation of 68 for all that was wrong with American political life (although one Lyndon Johnson gave him a run for his money as demon-in-chief). Robert Kennedy had it very eloquently right, as he did on many occasions, when he said that Richard Nixon represented the `dark side of the American spirit'. For those who believe that all political evil started with the current President George W. Bush, think again. Nixon was the `godfather' of the current ilk. Some have argued that in retrospect compared to today's ravenous beasts that Nixon's reign was benign. Believe that at your peril. Just to be on the safe side let's put another stake through his heart. And read this book to get an idea of what a representative of a previous generation of political evil looked like.

Although the Nixon saga is the central story that drives this book Professor Wills, as is his wont, has a lot more to say about the nature of those times. He takes some interesting side trips into earlier days in California where Nixon grew up. He draws a direct line on the various other personalities like Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney (Mitt's father) and a younger Ronald Reagan who fought Nixon for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. He gives an interesting overview of the state of liberal and radical thought during 1968 and how the tensions between them were fought out at the Democratic Convention and in the streets of Chicago.

Wills also tries to draw out the meaning of the virulent George Wallace independent third party campaign and how that kept everyone on their toes on the question of law and order the code word then, and today, for race. In short, Professor Wills has enclosed the Nixon story in a hug sociological and political survey of the times. Some of his observations had momentary importance; some have a more lasting value. Others seem rather beside the point. Collectively, however, they give a helpful history of the key year 1968 in America. The proof is in the pudding. The `culture wars' on the nature of personal rights, political expression and lifestyle choices that we have been fighting for the past forty years have their genesis in this time. Give this book a good, hard look if you want to know what that was all about by someone who covered many of the events closely.

Revised: May 14, 2008
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4.0 out of 5 stars Nixon wasn't really that ugly, was he?
Much of the prose reads like a journalist's field notes, sort of scattered, in medias res. The author's idiosyncracies guide his characterization of Nixon, e.g. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Any Metaphysician

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