One Man Against the World

Starred review from June 15, 2015
Weiner, a National Book Award winner for Legacy of Ashes, pulls no punches in his devastating account of Nixon's presidency, drawing on documents declassified in the last seven years. As his depressing introductory note states, "For those who lived under Nixon, it is worse than you may recollect. For those too young to recall, it is worse than you can imagine." Weiner doesn't spend much time on Nixon's formative years, judging them to be irrelevant to an objective assessment of a ruthless politicianâone whose conduct in the 1968 presidential campaign L.B.J. later deemed treasonous. For those who remember Nixon primarily for Watergate, Weiner also presents an eye-opening account of his role in the Vietnam War, when he initiated all-too-serious discussions of using nuclear weapons on the North Vietnamese. Weiner describes Nixon as "at war with his own military leaders" and notes that the president "would drink toasts and sign treaties with the men who were arming his enemies." Additionally, chilling excerpts from tape recordings that have only recently been made accessible include cold-blooded exchanges between Nixon and thenâSecretary of State Henry Kissinger in which the two debate the merits of committing war crimes in order to win in Vietnam. This is powerful raw material, but Weiner's brilliant turns of phrase transform it into something extraordinary.