Based largely on documents declassified only in the last few years, One Man Against the World paints a devastating portrait of a tortured yet brilliant man who led the country largely according to a deep-seated insecurity and distrust of not only his cabinet and congress, but, the American population at large. In riveting, tick-tock prose, Weiner illuminates how the Vietnam War and the Watergate controversy that brought about Nixon's demise were inextricably linked. From the hail of garbage and curses that awaited Nixon upon his arrival at the White House, when he became the president of a nation as deeply divided as it had been since the end of the Civil War, to the unprecedented action Nixon took against American citizens, who he considered as traitorous as the army of North Vietnam, to the infamous break-in and the tapes that bear remarkable record of the most intimate and damning conversations between the president and his confidantes, Weiner narrates the history of Nixon's anguished presidency in fascinating and fresh detail.
A crucial new look at the greatest political suicide in history, One Man Against the World leaves us not only with new insight into this tumultuous period, but also into the motivations and demons of an American president who saw enemies everywhere, and, thinking the world was against him, undermined the foundations of the country he had hoped to lead.
"[An] eye-opening study of Richard Nixon's booze-soaked, paranoid White House years and the endless tragedies they wrought.... It speaks volumes about Nixon that there is still more to learn about him, 40-plus years after Watergate. It speaks further volumes that what we are learning is even worse than what we knew."
The Kirkus Review (Starred Review)
"Thorough, devastating, and brilliantly convincing, perhaps the best profile of that complex man and his era we have had.... Those seeking to understand America in the second half of the twentieth century and, distressingly, beyond would do well to begin here. The tragedy was not Nixon's alone, but his role in it has never been portrayed more vividly."
Booklist (Starred Review)
"One Man Against the World is studded with gems. But perhaps its best part is the accounting of what Nixon has wrought in this country."
