Customer Reviews

The impudent snobs;: Agnew vs. the intellectual establishment,

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unlikely that this book will ever be reissued, but this is the best collection of Agnew's speeches ever published. The first half of the book is a frothing defense of Agnew, but the second half is composed of meticulous transcriptions of the bulk of Agnew's speeches up to the time of publication. Of interest to any Nixon and/or Agnew scholar.

The compilation of Spiro Agnew speeches from 1968 to 1971 will prove an invaluable resource to anyone who wishes to study the first half of Nixon's tempestuous presidency; indeed, even the unsavory introduction to those speeches prove useful in helping the reader enter the mind of the far right-wingers whose ideological bile would eventually evolve into the neo-conservative movement. However, for those who fall anywhere to the left of the O'Reilly Factor, I would strongly recommend using this book as a way to understand an era, and not as a volume to take seriously on its own terms. Even the staunchest conservative will probably pick up immediately on the massive factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies that are ridden throughout the text (both Coyne's introduction and the several dozen Agnew speeches); thus my two stars come from the same logic that would force me to partially prescribe a book by Pat Buchanan - it is worth reading as a means of thoroughly understanding both a historical period and a political/social way of thinking (indeed, I learned more about the philosophy of the Nixon Administration through this book, the declassified White House tapes, and the analysis of objective historians like Bruce Schulman than I have through the irate tirades of dozens of faux impartial academicians), but it is not to be admired (and G_d help us the day it is emulated).