num_pages: 881
description: Politically insightful Nixonland recaptures the turbulent 60s &amp; early 70s revealing how Dick Nixon rose from the political grave to seize &amp; hold the presidency. Perlstein's account begins with the '65 Watts riots nine months after Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus. Yet the next year scores of liberals were tossed from Congress America was more divided than ever &amp; a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback. Between '65 &amp; '72 America experienced a 2nd civil war. From its ashes today's political world was born. It was the era not only of Nixon Johnson Agnew Humphrey McGovern Daley &amp; Geo Wallace but Abbie Hoffman Ronald Reagan Angela Davis Ted Kennedy Chas Manson John Lindsay &amp; Jane Fonda. There are glimpses of Jimmy Carter Geo H.W. Bush Jesse Jackson John Kerry &amp; even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove &amp; Bill Clinton--&amp; an unambitious young man named Geo W. Bush. Cataclysms tell the story: Blacks trashing their neighborhoods. White suburbanites wielding shotguns. Student insurgency over the Vietnam War. The assassinations of Rbt F. Kennedy &amp; Martin Luther King. The riots at the '68 Democratic Nat'l Convention. The fissuring of the Democrats into warring factions manipulated by the dirty tricks of Nixon &amp; his Committee to ReElect the President. Nixon pledging a dawn of nat'l unity governing more divisively than any president before him then directing a criminal conspiracy the Watergate cover-up from the Oval Office. Then in 11/72 Nixon harvesting the bitterness &amp; resentment born of turmoil was reelected in a landslide not only setting the stage for his '74 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide characterizing America today. Filled with prodigious research driven by a powerful narrative Perlstein's account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.
language: English
title: Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
publisher: Scribner