books about: 1945-1974

books about: 1945-1974

books:

1945-1974

A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being Deep Throat, and the Struggle for Honor in Washington

Mark Felt, John O'connor

PublicAffairs, 2007

WATERGATE'S REAL HERO
Stuck in the middle of possibly the greatest scandal in the history of the government's Executive Branch, Mark Felt was more responsible for the destruction of the Watergate/White House cover-up than any other person in Washington. This book gives a great account of ...

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

Sean Wilentz

Harper, 2008

Could have been better
Sean Wilentz is a famous historian who wrote an excellent book, The Rise of American Democracy, a few years ago. This book is not as good. Wilentz's liberal biases doom a potentially terrific book. He seems incapable of praising Ronald Reagan without qualifying his ...

Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews

David Frost

Harper Perennial, 2007

The Origin of our Current Political Culture
Frost never quite comes out and says it, but it is clear reading the book that Nixon ultimately won. Nixon didn't "win" in the interview with Frost, but Nixon's paranoid views and his belief in unlimited presidential authority have prevailed. Things that Nixon said ...

The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat

Bob Woodward

Simon & Schuster, 2005

heads up!
i just bought a new hard cover edition of the secret man at my local 99 cent store! there were about 6 copies in stock when i left the store! just sharing! lol! 5 stars for the price alone!

Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes

Irving L. Janis

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982

A classic work in decision-making
When you fill a room with smart, capable people, why do decisions sometimes go so wrong? Janis has one hypothesis: They can become victims of "groupthink." Groupthink refers to (Page 9) ". . .deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment ...

All the President's Men

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein

Pocket, 2005

Must Read for all Americans
I purchased this book after seeing the movie, again, on TCM a couple of weeks ago. If you like the movie, you'll love the book. I was just 7-8 years old while Woodward and Bernstein were writing their Watergate stories for the Washington Post and knew very little ...

Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore (Oxford History of the United States, vol. ...

James T. Patterson

Oxford University Press, USA, 2005

First good history of the last 30 years
I read this book for a graduate class in American history. James T. Patterson's book is a historical overview of American history, which starts with one constitutional crisis and one of America's darkest hours politically, the resignation of President Richard Nixon, ...

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Rick Perlstein

Scribner, 2008

Nixonland is a long history of the 1960s when American exploded in division, destruction and disillusionment
Richard Milhous Nixon was one of the most complex, crafty and corrupt presidents of the United States! Nixon was born poor to a farmer/grocer in Yorba Linda California in 1913. He and his brothers were raised in a strict Quaker household by his pious mother. His father ...

Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations With Gerald R. Ford

Thomas M. DeFrank

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2007

An underappreciated Leader
Gerald Ford left history a gift with this book. He developed a strong rapport with Thomas DeFrank when the author was a part of the White House Press Corps during the remarkable transition when Richard Nixon relinquished his presidency. He made DeFrank his confidant ...

Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States)

James T. Patterson

Oxford University Press, USA, 1997

A well-balanced overview of America's most troubled era
James Patterson has assembled the most comprehensive survey of contemporary American history. With the Cold War as the backdrop, he guides the reader through a tumultuous period that took in two wars and the Civil Rights movement. He amply describes the nature of ...

Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House

Egil "Bud" Krogh

PublicAffairs, 2007

A Needed History Lesson For Our Times
At a time when we are governed by an administration that whole-heartedly believes "the ends justify the means", it is crucial to step back and look at history; to see where that motto has failed again and again. Bud Krogh writes an insightful and extremely timely ...

Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon

Stanley I. Kutler

W. W. Norton & Company, 1992

One spring, one well
If your goal is to understand the depth of Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal, Stanley Kutler's `The Wars of Watergate' is the book for it. It's a great introduction to Watergate without that qualifying caveat, of course, but Kutler perches his ...

Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball

Tom Graham, Rachel Graham Cody

Indiana University Press, 2008

The real "Hoosiers" story
This well-written book took me back to Shelbyville IN in the 1950s, when every barber shop displayed a picture of the 1947 championship team and every patron knew all their names. No one would question the effect Bill Garrett had on his home town, but few could have ...

Backstory in Blue: Ellington at Newport '56
John Fass Morton

Rutgers University Press, 2008

It may be that the song most baby boomers identify from July 1956 is a simple twelve-bar blues, hyped on national television by a twenty-one-year-old Elvis Presley and his handlers. But it is a very different song, with its elongated fourteen-bar choruses of rhythm and dissonance, played on the night of July 7, 1956, by a fifty-seven-year-old Duke ...

Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America

Keith W. Olson

University Press of Kansas, 2003

Den of ...
Taut summary account of the Watergate tale. This era remains in memory as a series of journalistic fragments and television images half-remembered. It is useful to redo the tape to assemble a fully coherent image and this work is an excellent short history and ...