Summers, Anthony. The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon. New York: Viking, 2000. 640 pages.

Two excellent previous books by Anthony Summers are indexed in NameBase: "Conspiracy," about the JFK assassination, and "Official and Confidential," about J. Edgar Hoover. This biography of Richard Nixon, based on five years of research and more than a thousand interviews, is an antidote to the undeserved stature that Nixon gained in the years after Watergate. It chronicles the dark side: Nixon's quirky personality and mental instability, his underhanded tactics and lust for intrigue, and his complete disregard for the Constitution.

His relationship with Charles Rebozo is covered very well, and the Howard Hughes connection as well as can be expected. Nixon's early plotting against Castro, while he was vice president under Eisenhower, sets the stage for his later paranoia during Watergate. On Vietnam, rather than getting us out of the war as he promised, Nixon secretly tried to derail Lyndon Johnson's negotiations in 1968, and once in office ended up escalating on one front or another in an attempt to scare the Eastern bloc into thinking that he was out of control and a madman (which, of course, he was). The only thing more pathetic than our nation under Nixon, is the fact that today, for every author like Anthony Summers, there are three or four slobbering, media-anointed wise men who still argue that Nixon was a great man.
ISBN 0-670-87151-6

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