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The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It Audiobook
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Based on Nixon’s overlooked recordings, New York Times bestselling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we’ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance. Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate. In The Nixon Defense, former White House Counsel John W. Dean, one of the last major surviving figures of Watergate, draws on his own transcripts of almost a thousand conversations, a wealth of Nixon’s secretly recorded information, and more than 150,000 pages of documents in the National Archives and the Nixon Library to provide the definitive answer to the question: What did President Nixon know and when did he know it? Through narrative and contemporaneous dialogue, Dean connects dots that have never been connected, including revealing how and why the Watergate break-in occurred, what was on the mysterious 18 1/2 minute gap in Nixon’s recorded conversations, and more. In what will stand as the most authoritative account of one of America’s worst political scandals, The Nixon Defense shows how the disastrous mistakes of Watergate could have been avoided and offers a cautionary tale for our own time.
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“Mr. Dean’s book will remind peopleof why Nixon deserves so unflattering a historical reputation, despite theopening to China and détente with the Soviet Union. It should also serve as arenewed cautionary tale about elevating politicians with questionable characterto high office…Mr. Dean’s resolve to reconstruct this dismal tale of highcrimes and misdemeanors is commendable: It is important to recall that Nixonwould have been impeached and convicted had he not resigned and possibly goneto prison without Ford’s pardon. In addition to creating a definitivehistorical record of how the Watergate scandal unfolded, The Nixon Defense resolves some major unsettled questions.”
— New York Times
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“The most intimate, detailed, complex, and nuanced portrait of a president and his courtiers that we have ever seen in print…Dean is scrupulously fair, but Nixon is undone by his own words. To read them is to be a fly on the wall in the palace court of the Nixon White House, to observe history close up as we have never seen it before…the closest we will ever come to knowing the real Richard Nixon. It is a fascinating and very important piece of history, and the stuff of great drama.”
— Huffington Post -
“Dean’s book relates, in essential and exquisite detail, the ethical disassembly of the most powerful man on Earth, turn by turn, conversation by conversation.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer -
“This account, drawing on notes, scrawls on legal pads, and transcripts of taped conversations, makes an odd but compelling stroll down Memory Lane for those who remember the time. Dean provides deft portraits of the likes of the unctuous Kissinger, the exceedingly odd Al Haig…and Nixon himself. And as for that missing tape, the one about which so much was made at the Watergate hearings? It would spoil the surprise to tell it here, but Dean has the answers. Essential to anyone’s library of Nixoniana.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“As Nixon’s legal counsel and to an extent his coconspirator, Dean is ideally placed to examine and analyze a massive trove of newly released Nixon recordings covering the period…Those unfamiliar will benefit greatly from this work, especially since some die-hard Nixon defenders and revisionists still maintain that Watergate ‘wasn’t that bad.’”
— Booklist -
“Dean is nothing, if not thorough…Here, Dean still has a fascinating story to tell, and he makes his points with emphasis. Joe Barrett narrates in what sounds like a perpetual whisper—as if he doesn’t want either Nixon or the NSA to hear him. In a way, this perfectly fits the book’s theme…He does successfully use character voices to re-create the people he’s describing. Overall, the book is worth listening to—in small doses.”
— AudioFile
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About John W. Dean
John W. Dean served as White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. During the Watergate scandal, his Congressional testimony helped lead to Nixon’s resignation. He has written about Watergate in his New York Times bestsellers Blind Ambition and The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. Among his other books are the national bestsellers Worse Than Watergate and Conservatives without Conscience. He is a regular political and legal commentator on CNN.
About Joe Barrett
Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.