Nixon In Winter

During the last four years  of Richard Nixon's life, Monica Crowley served as his foreign-policy assistant and political confidante--a trusted member of the small circle of advisors with whom he shared hours of daily one-on-one conversations.

This is the remarkable story of the final public and private years of the thirty-seventh president, based on full reconstructions of the conversations Crowley had with him at the time.  

Nixon in Winter puts the reader behind the scenes with the former president, allowing a unique glimpse into his life as elder statesman and private citizen.  It is filled with dramatic revelations about Nixon's influential role on the world stage, whether taking action himself to guide American foreign policy or whispering advice to his successors.  His hardheaded views on the end of the cold war, his emotional final trip to China, his powerful inside role during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and his poignant thoughts on the legacy of Vietnam are recounted--as well as his frustrations with being out of power and with foreign-policy failures of Presidents Bush and Clinton.

With astonishing candor, Nixon also shares his final, startling thoughts on Watergate, including his assessments of all the major players in the scandal and what he would--and would not--have done differently.  And he offers an uncompromising look at the way the sexual scandals surrounding the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Packwood have changed the politics of scandal.

Above all, he reveals a more private self than ever before as he reflects on his faith and his family, copes with the death of Mrs. Nixon, and struggles to deal with aging and the only force that could ultimately destroy him: death.

Nixon in Winter is the inside story of his last years.  It is an unprecedented firsthand portrait, private, provocative, and candid.

Monica Crowley served as a personal assistant to former president Richard M. Nixon from July 1990 until his death in April 1994. During that period, she maintained a private journal in which she recorded his utterances with transcriptive clarity (a trait she attributes to having written down each conversation immediately after it was concluded). In Nixon Off the Record, she presented his views on political leadership and his opinions of specific leaders. In this sequel, she concentrates on Nixon's vision for America's foreign policy, which formed the basis of his attempts to influence the foreign policy of his successors, and his increasing awareness and acceptance of his own mortality.

Although Nixon in Winter is almost assuredly intended to portray Nixon's final years as a strong, ideologically committed statesman in semiexile, what often comes through is the image of a lonely old man suffering from frustration over his unintended legacy and reputation. Dismissing even those biographies which depict him positively, he worries, "I haven't written enough. Look at Churchill. He wrote volumes. Maybe I should write more." There's a certain wistfulness to Nixon waking Crowley up with a phone call at 7:15 A.M. or cooking chili out of the can for the two of them, serving it with grapefruit juice ("I find that it cuts the taste of the chili"). Nixon in Winter rounds out the public image of one of the 20th century's most controversial leaders with an unusually personal perspective.