Finishing up The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era, by Deborah and Gerald Strober.
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The authors interviewed dozens and dozens of people who were at ground zero for all of Nixon's successes and failures - China, Watergate, Vietnam, etc, etc, etc, and they don't fail to deliver. Ehrlichman, Kleindeinst, Liddy, Haldeman, Dean, Mitchell, Ziegler, Cox, Kissinger, McGovern, Haig, etc.
On some points you really admire Nixon for what he did and wanted to do. I'm left with the impression that he was a much more Progressive president than history has painted him. He was so heavily weighed down with Watergate that his foreign and domestic agendas, which were forward-looking and substantial, were all thwarted, to the detriment of the U.S. and the world. Had he come clean and not tried to cover it all up, many of the contributors contend, his presidency may have prevailed.
Kissinger comes out looking like an asshole in this, too.
Anyway, recommended reading - can't put it down.
