Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Jefferson Public Library | 973.924 DALLEK | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Newberg Public Library | 973.924 DALLEK | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
In this epic dual biography, one of our most distinguished scholars--the bestselling author of An Unfinished Life--probes the lives and times of two unlikely leaders whose partnership dominated American and world affairs and changed the course of history
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were two of the most compelling, contradictory, and important leaders in America in the second half of the 20th century. Both were largely self-made men, brimming with ambition, driven by their own inner demons, and often ruthless in pursuit of their goals.
Tapping into a wealth of recently declassified documents and tapes, Robert Dallek uncovers fascinating details about Nixon and Kissinger's tumultuous personal relationship--their collaboration and rivalry--and the extent to which they struggled to outdo each other in the reach of foreign policy achievements. He also brilliantly analyzes their dealings with power brokers at home and abroad, including the nightmare of Vietnam, the brilliant opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union, the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, the disastrous overthrow of Allende in Chile, and growing tensions between India and Pakistan, while recognizing how both men were continually plotting to distract the American public's attention from the growing scandal of Watergate.
Authoritative, illuminating, and deeply engrossing, Nixon and Kissinger provides a shocking new understanding of the immense power and sway these two men held in affecting world history.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestselling author Dallek (An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy) delivers what will quickly become recognized as a classic of modern history: the definitive analysis of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's complex, often troubled partnership in running American foreign policy from January 1969 through August 1974. Dallek has had unprecedented access to major new resources, including transcriptions (20,000 pages) of Kissinger's telephone conversations as secretary of state, unreleased audio files of key Nixon telephone conversations and Oval Office discussions, and previously unexamined documents from the archives of Nixon, Kissinger (who served first as national security adviser, then as secretary of state) and White House hands Alexander Haig and H.R. Haldeman. Dallek's eloquent portrait of power depicts two men who were remarkably alike in important ways. Both harbored ravenous personal ambitions. Both suffered from (and operated out of) profound insecurities and low self-esteem. Both were deeply resentful (to the point of paranoia) of criticisms and challenges. Digging deep into the various archives, Dallek artfully fills in the back stories behind such debacles as the pair's policies in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Middle East, as well as such triumphs as the opening to China. In what many will consider the book's darkest moment, Dallek reveals for the first time the discussions and strategic thinking that led to the U.S.-orchestrated coup d'etat against Chile's democratically elected president alvador Allende in September of 1973. As he did with his Kennedy biography, Dallek finds important new material that ill revise our thinking about a president and the man the author terms "a kind of co-president." 16 pages of b&w photos. (May 1)(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Two men strive to be somebody, and nearly take down a nation along the way. Historian and biographer Dallek (Hail to the Chief, 1996, etc.) observes that neither Richard Nixon nor Henry Kissinger had much patience with psychoanalysis, but that does not deter him from engaging in a little psychobiography: Both Nixon and Kissinger, who were in essence co-presidents for the last months before Nixon resigned in 1974, were driven, needful men, able to apply themselves to the hardest work and quick to align themselves with those who could advance them. Kissinger, for instance, tried to insinuate himself in the Kennedy administration, but, rebuffed, was happy to find a place in Nixon's. That place would become central, to mixed result. As Dallek shows, Nixon and Kissinger were odd partners, each despising and fearing the other; years into their partnership, when Kissinger was nearly the only Nixon administration figure to enjoy high standing in the court of public opinion, Nixon complained to aide H.R. Haldeman that Kissinger "is very popular, got good applause, including from our opponents, and a standing and prolonged ovation at the House, but he didn't make our points." Much as he may have wanted to, however, Nixon never fired Kissinger, who in turn helped engineer Nixonian triumphs such as the so-called opening of China and the American withdrawal from Vietnam, but who also authored the loss of Vietnam and, though he denied it, the coup in Chile. Working from a trove of recently declassified documents, Dallek capably relates Nixon and Kissinger's strange relationship, which crumbled after Nixon left office. Along the way, he offers telling notes that a careful reader will link to current events, such as the congressional veto-busting that led to the War Powers Act and Nixon's last-minute appeal, very late in the game, that America should become energy-independent. In the end, a fine, readable and often disturbing look at power and its infinitely corruptible ways. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
VISIONARIES or cynics? Peacemakers or warmongers? Few individuals in recent times have provoked as much controversy as Richard Nixon and his partner in foreign affairs, Henry Kissinger. Admirers laud the two men for dramatically easing the cold war and sensibly recognizing the limits of American power to shape the world. Critics castigate them as Machiavellians who undertook reckless policies in the third world, often throwing American power behind brutal tyrants in elusive quests for international stability. Robert Dallek argues for another possibility: the two men were visionaries and cynics at the same time. On first consideration, this is an unremarkable conclusion. And yet "Nixon and Kissinger. Partners in Power" makes a valuable contribution to the study of American policy making during the turbulent years from 1969 through 1974. Partly, it does this by transcending the stale polemics that have surrounded the study of Nixon and Kissinger. But its more significant, if not wholly convincing, achievement is to connect the unevenness of their policy-making performance with the ups and downs of their peculiar personalities. "The careers of both Nixon and Kissinger," Dallek asserts, "reflect the extent to which great accomplishments and public wrongdoing can spring from inner lives." This isn't the first time Dallek, a prolific biographer of American presidents, has challenged simplistic characterizations of public men by delving into their private behavior. In 2003, his best-selling study, "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," drew on long-secret medical records to describe Kennedy's epic struggles against a variety of ailments. "Nixon and Kissinger" contains no such spectacular revelations. Indeed, Dallek's extensive use of recently declassified material - millions of pages of national security documents, 2,800 hours of Nixon's secret tape recordings and 20,000 pages of transcriptions of Kissinger's phone calls - seems to have turned up nothing to revise the broad contours of either man's life. Rather, Dallek exploits this new material mainly for the quotations and fresh details that enable him to paint rich portraits of his two subjects. Superficially, Nixon and Kissinger, who served first as Nixon's national secu-rity adviser and then as his secretary of state, had precious little in common. The president, son of a California grocer, identified with the hopes and grievances of middle America and bristled with resentment against East Coast sophisticates. Kissinger, a German-born Jew, rose to prominence as a pathbreaking scholar of international politics at Harvard and reveled in his acceptance among the political and intellectual elite. But fundamentally, Dallek shows, the two were remarkably alike. Both wanted desperately to leave a deep imprint on history. Both were ruthless pragmatists who disregarded decorum, principle and sometimes the law to get what they wanted. And both were insecure loners who distrusted, deceived and abused just about everyone, including each other. For these troubled men, Dallek writes, politics offered "a form of vocational therapy" - an arena where they could exercise control and find approval. Shared neuroses led to jealousy and hostility. Kissinger privately assailed Nixon as "that madman" and "the meatball mind." Nixon returned the favor, demeaning Kissinger as his "Jew boy" and calling him "psychopathic." He fretted incessantly that Kissinger was getting too much credit for the administration's accomplishments and repeatedly considered firing him. Still, Dallek writes, their common characteristics did even more to bond the two men, who formed "one of or possibly the most significant White House collaboration in U.S. history." Under some circumstances, Dallek suggests, their blend of ideological flexibility and monumental egotism produced bold foreign policy advances, most notably the opening of relations with Communist China in 1971-72. And he praises Nixon and Kissinger even more exuberantly for initiating détente with the Soviet Union. Agreements negotiated with Moscow, he argues, helped end the cold war by lowering Soviet hostility to the outside world and opening the country to Western influences, country to western influences, which ate away at Communist rule from the inside. Kissinger's efforts to make peace in the Middle East after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war similarly laid the groundwork for a later breakthrough, in this case the landmark 1978 accord between Egypt and Israel. On other occasions, Dallek writes, Nixon and Kissinger's cynicism and unreasonable fear of defeat interacted to produce some of the administration's ugliest moments. Above all, the two men needlessly prolonged and expanded the Vietnam War in a disastrous attempt to stave off a Communist victory at a moment when most Americans and most of the world wanted the fighting to end. In Chile, Nixon and Kissinger conspired to overthrow the Socialist government of Salvador Allende - and to bring the murderous regime of Augus-to Pinochet to power - even though they could not identify any specific way in which Allende threatened the United States. Their fear that a leftist government in Chile might inspire radicals throughout Latin America was, Dallek charges, "nothing more than paranoia." What's more, Dallek presents a devastating account of irresponsibility and dysfunction within the White House as the Watergate scandal unfolded. Desperate to save their careers, Nixon and Kissinger schemed to manipulate foreign policy to distract attention from the deepening domestic crisis. When these efforts failed, an increasingly unbalanced and alcohol-fogged Nixon abandoned foreign affairs almost entirely, leaving Kissinger in charge as a son of unelected "copresident." At the start of the 1973 Middle East war, Kissinger delayed informing Nixon for two and a half hours because of uncertainty about the politically embattled president's ability to cope with urgent decisions. DALLEK'S attention to personalities makes "Nixon and Kissinger" remarkably engaging for a 700-page study of policy making. But this emphasis also underlies its chief weakness: the implication that the foreign policy devised by Nixon and Kissinger lacked intellectual coherence. Curiously, Dallek fails to describe at any length the rapidly shifting geostrategic landscape that confronted the Nixon administration as it entered office in 1969 - above all, the relative decline of American power due to the Vietnam War and the Soviet Union's attainment of nuclear parity with the United States. Nor does he adequately explore Nixon's or Kissinger's innovative response to this new situation. Champions of realpolitik, the two men deliberately favored cool-headed calculation of national interests over ideological consistency. Without this essential background, their decisions seem haphazard rather than parts of a strategy to shore up United States influence by cultivating a new partner in China, easing the cost of the arms race with Moscow, bolstering pro-American leaders in the third world and avoiding defeat in Vietnam. The narrow focus on character also obscures the full extent of the two men's failures as policy makers. To be sure, their compulsive secretiveness and paranoia con-tributed to the downfall of the Nixon administration, precisely as Dallek suggests. But the two failed in a more profound sense as well. Their policies, rooted in the cold calculation of American interests, generated a powerful backlash from both liberals, angered by the brutalization of the third world, and conservatives, who objected to the coddling of Communists. The liberals helped elect Jimmy Carter in 1976, the conservatives Ronald Reagan in 1980 - presidents who, despite their many differences, shared a deep hostility to the lack of moral principle at the heart of Nixon-era foreign policy. The ideas of Nixon and Kissinger, not just their characters, have languished in disrepute ever since. Kissinger called Nixon 'that madman.' Nixon returned the favor, calling Kissinger 'psychopathic.' Mark Atwood Lawrence teaches history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of "Assuming the Burden: Europe." and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam."
Library Journal Review
Dallek, the author of such first-rate biographies as An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, now offers an excellent reassessment of one of the most imposing foreign policy duos in U.S. history. Nixon and Kissinger both reveled in power and were driven by the hope of attaining greatness, expectations that were shattered in part by their mutual arrogance, cynicism, and need for constant reassurance. The author maintains that their partnership achieved important victories, notably the opening of China, detente with the Soviet Union, and Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy, which ended the 1973 Yom Kippur War at a time when Nixon was consumed by Watergate. However, such failures as the disastrous policies in Vietnam and Cambodia, which resulted in thousands of American and millions of Asian deaths; the toppling of the legitimately elected Allende government in Chile; and the willingness to use foreign policy as a means to secure Nixon's reelection and to downplay Watergate damaged America's reputation for decades. Both men spent the post-Nixon years writing many popular books--16 between them--in attempts to rehabilitate or enhance their reputations. Dallek's is an important analysis, based on recently available declassified records and includes important caveats for current policy makers. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/07.]--Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.