One of our most distinguished historians, Robert Dallek is the author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, which was a number one New York Times best-seller. His latest book is Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, which received an honorable mention in the 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. He also wrote the foreword to The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family by Richard Avedon and Shannon Thomas Perich. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Society of American Historians, which he served as president in 2004-2005. Nixon and Kissinger is an epic biography of two unlikely leaders who came together to dominate American and world affairs. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were two of the most compelling, contradictory, and important leaders in America in the second half of the twentieth century. Both were largely self-made men, brimming with ambition and often ruthless in pursuit of their goals. Tapping into recently disclosed documents and tapes, 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 away from the growing scandal of Watergate. Authoritative, illuminating, and deeply engrossing, Nixon and Kissinger gives us a new understanding of just how important and consequential these two men were in affecting world history. Robert Dallek is an emeritus professor of history at UCLA. He has been Montgomery Fellow and a visiting professor at Dartmouth and is now teaching courses on the presidency for Stanford in Washington. |
