A useful historical document on the seemingly evergreen topic of the Nixon White House.
Journalist Locker (Nixon’s Gamble: How a President’s Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration, 2015) continues to unravel White House intrigue during Richard M. Nixon’s administration by focusing on the outsized persona of Alexander Haig (1924-2010).
During his career, Haig combined his high-ranking military status with his role as Nixon’s White House chief of staff to place his imprint on U.S. foreign and domestic policy initiatives. The author focuses less on those initiatives than on Haig’s devious roles within the corrupt Nixon presidency. After Haig realized the extent of the corruption, he pretended to serve as Nixon’s confidant while actually maneuvering to drive him from the presidency. However, Locker rarely ascribes noble motives to Haig, suggesting instead that his vanity drove him to believe that he could direct the fate of the nation better than any elected politician. Haig published his own version of events in a 1992 memoir, Inner Circles: How America Changed the World, a book that Locker claims is filled with exaggerations and outright falsehoods. After presenting a brief biography of Haig, Locker chronicles the unraveling of the Nixon presidency in month-by-month chapters beginning in May 1973 and ending in August 1974. Locker’s account is especially revelatory when he moves away from the convoluted scandals of Watergate and explains how Haig maneuvered to place Gerald Ford as Nixon’s successor. That maneuvering required the jettisoning of initial vice president Spiro Agnew, whose corrupt years as Maryland’s governor caught up with him. Ford replaced Agnew, at which juncture Haig felt comfortable accelerating the timetable for Nixon’s departure. When the author delves further into Watergate, he provides copious details about dozens of already well-known characters. In many instances, the author criticizes the work of Bob Woodward and his mostly hidden source relationship with Haig. Though the chronological structure of the narrative leads to repetition and sometimes difficult-to-digest detail, Locker’s reconsideration of the Nixon administration offers enough fresh insight to make it worthwhile.
A useful historical document on the seemingly evergreen topic of the Nixon White House.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64012-035-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
