Rating  - Pre-history of the Present Crisis
The other reviews already spell out just what makes this such a brilliant book, but I thought it worth adding that as the world looks on waiting for the election November that this book provides a pre-history to the present moment in the same eway, though much more compellingly, that Tom Frank's Kansas book did 4 years ago. Time will tell if we're going to get of Nixonland, but the way we got there is mapped out clearly here.
Rating  - Nixonland my review
Nixonland is an objective look at Richard Nixons life and times, while greater detail could have been given at times, the events and cast of characters keep this book interestiing and amusing. My opinion of Eugene McCarthy went up, My opinion of Nixon went down slightly. The image of a major bombing of Cambodia at the same time Nixon is making a speech denying involment there stuck. Rick Perlsteins Nixonland is a good read and a great look at the real 60s and early 70s.
Rating - A gift
Sorry but I can't review the book as it was bought as a present (his choice) but I understand from the recipient that he enjoyed it very much.
Rating - About then, about now
This is a journalist's cultural account of the Nixon years, not a historian's textbook, and not a biography of RMN. It's a great read, filled with fabulous details that historians tend to overlook. Here's Al Capp trying to pick a fight with John Lennon; there's Lorne Greene attacking McGovern for lack of support of Israel.
Three caveats. First, the nature of the book makes it hard to figure out where you are. As others have mentioned, dates aren't given, and he does go back and forth a few times. Second, it's hard to ignore the possibility that Perlstein may be reading the present into the past. His approach is so anecdotal -- not in the sense of being false, but in the sense of focusing on small things that are supposed to represent larger things -- that we are at his mercy. For example, he quotes letters written to Time magazine. This adds color, but also forces us to trust the author that these items really are representative.
Third: we don't get to see Nixon tossed out of office. The book ends before.
Rating  - Disappointing: expected more
I had heard good things about Nixonland and it started out very well. Unfortunately, Perlstein perpetuates a lot of the mythology of that period and could not repress his own biases in his discussion of Richard Nixon and his times. As previous reviewers have noted, this book is loaded with inaccuracies and poor research but of greatest importance, he misses (or miscasts) the central tragedy of that period and Nixon. Richard Nixon pursued the presidency as an idealist, believing in the purity of the presidency and his unique capabilities to straighten out our country and its position in the world. He inherited all of JFK's and LBJ's social programs and turmoil with their huge costs, an all-consuming Cold War in progress with the Soviet Union and China, a full-up hot war in Vietnam with nearly half a million troops 10,000 miles away and its costs, and a huge space program costing yet more. It was a political and fiscal train wreck that was almost beyond any one president's powers to rectify. Perlstein also glosses over the "antiwar" movement, focusing on immaterial areas like the hippies and the Socialist Worker's Party's "New Mobe" while completely missing or avoiding the direct connections of the US Communist Party, its umbrella People's Coalition for Peace and Justice and their direction of the schedules, sustainment, and "thrust" of nation wide pro-enemy activities. In Perstein's account, there isn't any mention of the continuous flow of activists travelling to Hanoi to meet with the enemy or the return flow of propaganda and guidance that came from the North Vietnamese. Nixon was rigidly opposed by the nation's media who held a complete monopoly on the information given to the people in those days as "news" and the law enforcement agencies watched mutely as treasons were committed and American lives lost. It's a shame. Nixon was a rare individual and he had enormous talents but the deck was stacked against him. Too bad Perlstein couldn't get past his own leftist biases to come up with a more accurate picture.
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