Nixon in winter

the long version

During the last four years of Richard Nixon's life, Monica Crowley served as his foreign-policy assistant and political confidant - a trusted member of the small circle of advisers 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. 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 the 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.