Musical Involvement: A Guide to Perceptive Listening

The workings of Nixon's mind and his presidency are revealed in this selection of memos, detailing the behind-the-scenes political machinations, personal schemes, worries, and obsessions of the Nixon administration

Journalist/historian Oudes here does a masterful job sifting through the tens of thousands of documents generated by the White House staff during Richard Nixon's presidency. The title notwithstanding, many of the memos and letters presented here were written by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson and other less well-known figures, as well as by the president himself. Several now familiar themes are reinforced: mistrust of the press, identification of "friends" and "enemies," examples of hardball politics of the 1972 campaign and the battles with congressional committees over the release of Watergate documents. Side by side with memos on fairly trivial mattersbirds crashing into the windows of the Oval Office, modern art in U.S. embassies and a semiliterate appeal from Elvis Presley who offered his services as an anti-drug spokesmanare discussions of the weightier issues facing Nixon: normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China, domestic unrest and Vietnam. The book provides an instructive, revelatory look at the character and workings of the Nixon White House. First serial to People.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A year before Nixon resigned from office under the heat of Watergate, he began putting together a "Special File" to hide documents which might be considered sensitive, politically or personally. Oudes has compiled these memos (unfortunately by date and not topic) between the President and top subordinates, among key personnel in the White House, and between key personnel and others outside the Oval Office. He chronicles the foibles of a president who exhibited a remarkable penchant for detail and a virtual obsession with getting even with his enemies, and one who was perennially frustrated by the lack of cooperation he received from bureaucracies and his staff. Offered here is a wide-angle view of the last days of President Nixon and his administration. A valuable library addition.
- Frank Kessler, Missouri Western State Coll., St. Joseph
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.