Nixon Agonistes (ePub)

GARRY WILLS, a distinguished historian and critic, is the author of numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lincoln at Gettysburg, Saint Augustine, and the best-selling Why I Am a Catholic. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he has won many awards, among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. He is a history professor emeritus at Northwestern University.

“Astonishing . . . a stunning attempt to possess that past, that we may all of us escape it.” —John Leonard, The New York Times Book Review
 
“The best book so far about the man, the best written, the best thought out.” —The New York Review of Books
 
“The wit of Nixon Agonistes is a constant delight. Heckling, breezy, allusive . . . [Wills] is a born reporter, a cartoonist in words, master of a tradition of tongue-in-cheek sassiness that goes back well over a century in American political journalism.” —Commentary
“Wills succeeds, in the end, in making his point, about Nixon, and about America. . . . The topic is fascinating, and Wills has ideas which never occurred to other writers.” —The Harvard Crimson
 
“[Nixon Agonistes is] still the one indispensable primer on modern American politics après le déluges of the clamorous 1960s, part Mencken, part Aristotle, part Moby Dick.” —Prospect Magazine
 
“[Wills] draws us into this multifaceted study with legwork: reportage of Nixon’s 1968 Wisconsin campaign, investigations of Whittier family and landmarks, the Republican and Democratic conventions. . . . He can be very amusing, as in his comparisons of American liberals to Dostoevsky’s Verkhovensky and David Eisenhower to Howdy Doody. The book alternates selective biography with state-of-the-republic impressions and political flashbacks. Wills sketches advisers and allies; a sharp fresh review of early campaigns; [and] Nixon's vexed relationship with Eisenhower.” —Kirkus Reviews