Watergate: A New History

by Garrett M. Graff

Hardcover, 2022

Status

Available

Call number

973.924

Genres

Politics, Government, Law and Public Policy

Biography

Biography & Memoir

All Topics

Publication

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (2022), 832 pages

Description

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky, the first definitive narrative history of Watergate, exploring the full scope of the scandal through the politicians, investigators, journalists, and informants who made it the most influential political event of our modern era."--Amazon.

User reviews

LibraryThing member dbsovereign

All-inclusive and intensely personal retelling of the scandal - from newly published sources and with a new perspective as a result of new facts. Having lived through it all, I recall watching the Congressional hearings on TV and noting what stars Sam Ervin and Howard Baker became as a result

...[in progress]

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LibraryThing member nmele

I have known Garret Graff for some time. Okay, with that out of the way, this is a thorough account of the end of the Nixon presidency because of the Watergate conspiracies. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in rural South Korea but followed the progress of the Watergate investigations fairly well

through the Armed Forces radio, Time and Newsweek magazines, and the Korean press. Graff traces a multitude of threads back to the Nixon White House using court documents, tapes and tape transcripts and all the wealth of journalism and historical research that has appeared over the decades. For all it's complexity and for all the conflicting accounts, this history of Watergate offers a gripping and accurate account of the unraveling of the Nixon administration in a dispassionate tone that underlines the enormity of the scandal and its impact on American politics to this day.

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LibraryThing member arubabookwoman

I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about Watergate, but not so. Graff's premise is that what we call "Watergate" and what brought Nixon's presidency down was not just the burglary at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, but what went on through-out Nixon's presidency (and

before). The first hundred or so pages dealt with some of the earlier scandals of the Nixon presidency, and I had a hard time getting into the book. But once we got to the burglary and the ensuing coverup and payofffs and congressional investigations and indictments, the book took off, reading like a thriller and a real page-turner. Overall 69 people, as well as many large corporations were indicted resulting from the Watergate scandal.

A couple of interesting tidbits. Female attorneys were relatively rare back then. I know I was in law school (and avidly watching the hearings on TV everyday). However, the Ervin Committee had a female attorney, Jill Volner, on its staff. The book describes how at a meeting with Jen Magruder (one of those ultimately convicted) at which she was present when asked whether he wanted coffee, "Magruder turned to Volner and said 'I'll take mine black.' Neal {Volner's boss}...drawled, 'Not very smart, insulting a major player in deciding the terms of your plea agreement.'"
And one of the 43 attorneys on the Impeachment Committee's staff was a young attorney named Hillary Rodham. And just for fun, another interesting factoid is that at the time Federal court rules barred females from wearing trousers to court.

Recommended

4 stars

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LibraryThing member muddyboy

Now that decades have passed the time was ripe for a retelling of the Watergate story in this exhaustive study; Graff leaves no stone unturned in this six hundred plus page book. It moves along at a good pace filled with nuggets that I really enjoyed that were not available until recent history. I

teach college history and learned a lot. One thing I didn't know was that Gerald Ford was named Leslie L. King Jr. until he was sixteen days old. for his abusive father. He was later renamed for his mom's second husband. Neat stuff.

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