Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America

A nationally syndicated columnist and political pundit explores the personal and political relationship of Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, showing how the course of that relationship reflected that of the whole nation. Reprint. 35,000 first printing."

Christopher Matthews, the Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner and a former aide to Tip O'Neill, offers a fascinating look at the connections between the two most well-known politicians in the last 40 years. He traces the symmetries of their beginnings--both were elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and assigned to the same committee--as well as their similar thirst for power. While both men's rise and fall, events that had profound effects on America, have been well chronicled, Matthews' book is one of the few, if not only, that places the two in parallel historical context.