WITH NO APOLOGIES: The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater

I make no apologies for what I've done or for what I've said in twenty-five years spent in the company of the rulers of America,"" Goldwater announces, but precisely because he has been so outspoken, we have heard it all before, and this ""insider's view"" sounds shopworn and familiar. After a brief family history--Polish ancestry, settlement in California, Phoenix department store, Air Force--we move to the national scene with Goldwater's 1952 election to the senate. He mourns ""dismantlement"" of our WW II military machine; sees Korea representing the ""apparent loss"" of our ""commitment to defend freedom at any cost""; defends Joe McCarthy (he and Edward Bennett Williams urged McCarthy to avoid censure by apologizing to two Senators); says the Kennedys attacked Hoffa, not Reuther, because JFK needed the UAW for his election. More tangibly, Goldwater tried to help Nixon by finding irregularities in the 1960 West Virginia Democratic primary; claims that LBJ ran with JFK because the Kennedys threatened to investigate his finances; and describes his '64 campaign problems with fellow Republicans and the press (he denies wanting to abolish Social Security or use atomic weapons in Vietnam). He also likes Agnew, always had doubts about Nixon, and calls J. Edgar Hoover ""a national hero."" The right-wing litany persists throughout: government has too much control of our daily lives; Communists want ""to rule the world""; federal spending is the ""root cause"" of inflation; ""the surest road to peace is through military strength."" More sparks from the conscience of a conservative.