Nixon is in the news again, most recently as the cover story on yesterday’s CBS Sunday Morning.

Reporter David Martin interviewed both Nixon’s Deputy Assistant to the President, Alexander Butterfield, the man who told the world about the White House taping system, and Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein, exposed Nixon’s crimes.

Woodward’s new book, The Last of the President’s Men (S&S; S&S Audio), is based on interviews with Butterfield and 20 boxes of papers (some of them classified as top secret) he carried out of the White House. The book details Butterfield’s role, outlines the political era of Nixon, and offers a candid view of Nixon himself.

Much of the CBS Sunday Morning report centers on Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War – bombing even as he internally raged against its ineffectiveness and his determination to discredit witnesses of the My Lai massacre.

It also addresses what Woodward calls “a subversion of what the job of the presidency is.” For example, Nixon had the CIA, FBI, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities all look into a civil servant who had two pictures of President Kennedy in her office – an offense Nixon obsessed over and called an “infestation.”

While orders and holds are light at libraries we checked, Woodward’s book is currently #60 and rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2015 at 12:24 pm and is filed under 2015 -- Fall, Nonfiction, Politics and Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.