The President's Man

September 1, 2021

In Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, CNN anchor Avlon addresses President Abraham Lincoln's conciliatory vision regarding the post-Civil War era, aiming to show how it influenced activists from Nelson Mandela to Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. (75,000-copy first printing). The New York Times best-selling Baime's White Lies profiles Black civil rights activist Walter F. White, who figured largely in the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP while leading a dual life as a reporter investigating racial violence in the South because he could pass for white (40,000-copy first printing). Chapin, The President's Man, here recalls his years as personal aide, special assistant, and finally deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon as the 50th anniversary of Watergate looms. In African Founders, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fischer shows that enslaved Africans brought with them skills ranging from animal husbandry to ethics that profoundly shaped colonial and early U.S. society (100,000-copy first printing). A conservative gay reporter who has received awards from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Kirchick dug through multitudinous declassified documents and interviewed over 100 people to write Secret City, which profiles the impact of the LGBTQ+ community on Washington, DC, politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. A multi-award-winning journalist and professor emeritus at Champlain College, Randall intends to show that not only were The Founders' Fortunes pledged in support of the Revolutionary War but that concerns about their fortunes helped prompt it. A professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Thompson is an acknowledged expert in the national debate surrounding Smashing Statues--should controversial public monuments be pulled down or allowed to stand? Journalist/author Thompson ( Kickflip Boys) uses newly released records to tell the story of Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, who fled Ireland's Great Famine for Boston, MA, and became The First Kennedys, founders of a political dynasty.

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November 8, 2021
Chapin, who worked as a deputy assistant to Richard Nixon, debuts with an unconvincing apologetic that reflects on his time in Nixon’s White House. In 1962, Chapin, then a college student, started working for Nixon as a field organizer for his California gubernatorial campaign. He soon became close with the candidate and later joined Nixon’s White House staff as his appointments secretary, with an office next to the Oval. Chapin provides an insider’s perspective on what he deems the White House’s “ethical culture” and major developments of Nixon’s administration, including the ending of official American involvement in the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons negotiations with the Soviets, as well as significant domestic achievements that Chapin believes were obscured by the Watergate investigation. His revisionist take on the scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation, however, is troublesome. In addition to suggesting that the inquiry was the equivalent of a coup, Chapin—who was convicted of lying to a grand jury during the Watergate investigation—insists that Nixon did nothing to warrant his removal from office. To further erode his credibility, he evades responsibility for his own crimes, while admitting that he lied in a letter to a federal judge seeking an earlier release from prison (“I didn’t believe a word of what I had written”). There’s no shortage of books about the Nixon presidency, and this one brings little new to the table. Agent: Matt Latimer, Javelin Group.

January 1, 2022
A former Nixon associate, jailed for perjury during the Watergate investigation, professes his loyalty to his former boss. During his childhood, Chapin (b. 1940) and his family moved from a Kansas farm to Southern California. As a teenager, he fell into politics not long after arriving in Encino, where "we lived right across the street from the flamboyant and very popular pianist Liberace." After serving as senior class president in high school, he went door to door, "the bottom rung of politics," for Sam Yorty, "the independent maverick and outspoken mayor of Los Angeles." Soon he was working as an advance man for Nixon, "the most complex man I've ever known." While Chapin allows that Nixon could be impenetrable and always played his cards close to his chest, he remains a true believer, so much so that he largely pins the Watergate mess on John Dean. Like Chapin, who served time in a country-club prison in California for lying to Congress, Dean, Haldeman, and a few other once-familiar names figure in the narrative. The account is of value for a few small matters, his protestations of innocence not among them--everyone is innocent, by his account, and it's only through Democratic machinations that he was unfairly jailed. Foremost among the book's virtues is Chapin's fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of the Nixon White House, with a president given to self-isolation and paranoia, "practiced at revealing very little of himself," and a staff fraught with internal squabbling. The takeaways on the ever ambitious Henry Kissinger and Al Haig are to the point. However, as the author sagely notes, "Watergate is now becoming ancient history. Most Americans are curious as to what it was about, but their eyes glaze over when anyone starts to talk about the details of the story." Too much of this frequently self-serving book will induce just that stupor. Contains a few useful insights but of tertiary interest to students of the Nixon presidency.

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January 1, 2022
Chapin was one of those bright young Californians recruited to serve as an aide to Nixon in his pursuit of political power. Growing up in Southern California and belonging to the right fraternity at the University of Southern California put Chapin on the fast track. Starting with Nixon's 1962 gubernatorial race, Chapin came to know the man and his ambitions as they evolved. Under the tutelage of H. R. Haldeman, Chapin had charge of Nixon's White House scheduling, and his account of the cultural barriers he encountered can provoke laughter. As have so many others in Nixon's inner circle, Chapin finds Nixon a jumble of contradictions--a man of political skill, deep knowledge, and lofty vision, but often mired in petty rows. Chapin's loyalty raised him to the center of world power; that path, though, ultimately led him to prison for perjury in connection with Watergate. Chapin's autobiography offers some entertaining anecdotes about many who passed through his office and will appeal to Nixonians and to those looking for yet another very personal perspective on Watergate.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.