King Richard: Nixon and Watergate--An American Tragedy

By Michael Dobbs

ONE OF USA TODAY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A riveting account of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed, and ultimately toppled, a president—from the best-selling author of One Minute to Midnight.

In January 1973, Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated after winning re-election in a historic landslide. He enjoyed an almost 70 percent approval rating. But by April 1973, his presidency had fallen apart as the Watergate scandal metastasized into what White House counsel John Dean called “a full-blown cancer.” King Richard is the intimate, utterly absorbing narrative of the tension-packed hundred days when the Watergate conspiracy unraveled as the burglars and their handlers turned on one another, exposing the crimes of a vengeful president.

Drawing on thousands of hours of newly-released taped recordings, Michael Dobbs takes us into the heart of the conspiracy, recreating these traumatic events in cinematic detail. He captures the growing paranoia of the principal players and their desperate attempts to deflect blame as the noose tightens around them. We eavesdrop on Nixon plotting with his aides, raging at his enemies, while also finding time for affectionate moments with his family. The result is an unprecedentedly vivid, close-up portrait of a president facing his greatest crisis.

Central to the spellbinding drama is the tortured personality of Nixon himself, a man whose strengths, particularly his determination to win at all costs, become his fatal flaws. Rising from poverty to become the most powerful man in the world, he commits terrible errors of judgment that lead to his public disgrace. He makes himself—and then destroys himself.

Structured like a classical tragedy with a uniquely American twist, King Richard is an epic, deeply human story of ambition, power, and betrayal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9780385350105

Michael Dobbs

Michael Dobbs is a former Washington Post Foreign Correspondent and author of the critically acclaimed One Minute to Midnight, recognised as one of the best ever books on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Reviews for King Richard

[john.cooper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Armed with every recorded tape (and at this point, anything that went on in any of Richard Nixon's offices was taped), every published photo, and every West Wing memoir dealing with the hundred days after Nixon's second inauguration, Dobbs takes us inside the White House as the Watergate incident explodes from a sketchy burglary into an unprecedented scandal and a possible constitutional crisis. And by "takes us inside," I don't mean "describes." Instead, Dobbs uses the taped or reported conversations as dialog and the photos and descriptions as setting to give us an immersive, novelistic view into the inner workings of this White House at this historic time. Many "characters" whose names I knew from the nightly news as a child ("Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Haldeman! Ehrlichman! John Dean and Nixon!") become fleshed out here, and at times sympathetic; it doesn't excuse his crimes to know that even Nixon had his kind and vulnerable sides, and wept honest tears when he was forced by events to fire his two closest aides. Dobbs is not a great prose stylist, but his approach is ingenious and effective. Recommended to any student of the period, or to people like me for whom Watergate was an early political awakening.

[froxgirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Probably only a true Watergate aficionado would even pick up this book, but for those of us who know every detail of the miserable saga, there's still more to learn. This is a more chatty and intimate look at all the major Watergate denizens, plus the obsequious Henry Kissinger, and the author manages to make all of them a teeny tiny bit sympathetic, except for Gordon Liddy, the Roger Stone of that era. It's probably Trump and his sycophants that manage to make Nixon's intentions look good, but Nixon was just as contemptuous of those who opposed him as Trump is. The really remarkable lookback is to the 1974 Republicans in Congress, who not only became disenchanted with lawbreaking but would have surely impeached Nixon if he hadn't resigned. They voted 77-0 to set up a Select Committee to investigate Watergate! Not only is Trump (with his total lack of interest in foreign relations, the opposite of Nixon) worse than Nixon's wildest dreams, but so are McConnell, McCarthy, Gaetz et al. I believe that Nixon would have seen them all for the traitors that they are.Quotes: “Without anyone giving much thought to the possible consequences, Liddy’s wild ideas had become part of the bureaucratic paper flow.”“The war had damaged the foundations of the American body politic, the social contract between government and governed. It had caused ordinary Americans to question the competence, good faith, even honesty of their leaders.”“By this stage virtually everyone involved in the scandal was lying or concealing something. Watergate had become an intricate game of deception, played at many different levels by many different actors.”

[vashonjim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent view of the inner workings of the Nixon White House during the Watergate crisis.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Detailed history of the 100 days leading up the Nixon's resignation. To be honest, I often felt lost in the morass of people and events - this is a complex event, no fault of Dobbs just the nature of it. Would have helped to know the geography beforehand. The audiobook is interlaced with recordings from Nixon's tapes, it is cool to suddenly hear Nixon talking. I was expecting to loath him by the end, but he comes across the tragic figure. Despicable what he did, but also brave: he did not to destroy the tapes when he could have, keeping them for posterity. He fired all his closest aids a great loss to him. He chose to resign when those around him said to stay. I often thought Trump is another Nixon, but that degrades Nixon.