UNITED STATES AUTHOR · POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT · FOREIGN RELATIONS
Nixon, Richard M.
Next to the Bible and Shakespeare, Churchill is the most frequent source of quotations.
— from The wit & wisdom of Winston Churchill, 1994
Most acclaimed
Richard Nixon
1997
Despite an abundance of literature on Richard Nixon, the man behind the most spectacular crash-and-burn career of modern political history has remained an enigma. What lay behind his obsessive hunger for power and control, his attacks against enemies real and perceived, his refusal to accept defeat? Why did a man who had achieved so much feel so unfulfilled even at the height of his power? And what drove the president responsible for such triumphs as the opening of relations with China to the depths of the most devastating political scandal in American history? Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography is the first thoroughgoing psychological portrait of the 37th president, drawing upon telling interviews with Nixon intimates, published and archived materials, and employing a rigorous psychoanalytic methodology. Tracing the development of Nixon's complex psyche, the authors provide new insight not only into his unconsious motivations but also into the way they influenced his political actions, whether shrewd or disastrous. This probing analysis makes intelligible the moments in Nixon's presidency that have provoked much speculation but few answers, from his attempt to talk to Vietnam war protesters during a pre-dawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial to his keeping of the White House tapes. A more nuanced, more humanized Nixon emerges in a book that also provides compelling evidence that the politics of a nation is subject to the unconscious needs, fears, and fantasies of its leaders.
In the arena
Looking back over a career that has spanned half a century and a lifetime devoted to being the best possible, both as an actor and as a man, Charlton Heston writes of what it was like to live In the Arena. Heston began his career as an actor in New York shortly after he returned from service in World War II. Television was a fledgling industry then, and there were many opportunities for young performers in this new medium. Broadway was thriving as well, and Heston found work there too. It was not long, however, before Hollywood took note of his talents and his commanding presence. Soon he was embarked on a series of films that were both memorable and hugely successful. He was Moses in The Ten Commandments; he played the title character in Ben-Hur (for which he won an Academy Award); he was Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy; he played the title character in El Cid; he has played presidents, generals, and statesmen. In recent years, Heston has continued to appear in films, on stage, and on television, but at the same time, he has devoted a great amount of his energy to causes in which he has strong and outspoken beliefs. An active supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the early days of the struggle for civil rights in America, he continues to this day to lobby hard for the rights of all men to live family and equally in a country that he loves dearly.