Table of Contents

* Introduction: Nixon Is More Than Watergate Reevaluating Nixons Domestic Policies * Beyond the New Deal and the Great Society * The Nixonian System of Corporate Governance * Civil Rights Invigorated * Bold Attempts at Welfare, Health, and Economic Reform Reevaluating Nixons Foreign Policies * An Overview of Nixinger Diplomacy * Dtente, NATO, and Rapprochement * Vietnam: Without Peace or Honor * Balancing the Foreign Policy Scale Reevaluating Watergate * Prelude to Watergate: Civil Rights Violated * Watergate Revisited: Politics or Sex? * Watergate Is More Than Nixon

About the Author

Joan Hoff, professor of history at Indiana University and co-editor of the Journal of Women's History, is a specialist in twentieth-century American foreign policy and politics and in the legal status of American women. She was executive secretary of the Organization of American Historians from 1981 to 1989. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, includig the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians' Article Prize and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize for the best book on American diplomacy. She is the author of several books including Law, Gender, and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women and Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive.

Reviews

Nixon was both the best and the worst of modern presidents, opines Hoff, who argues that Watergate clouded his substantial domestic achievements. In this closely argued reassessment, she criticizes his foreign policy accomplishments--only rapprochement with China remains intact--and profiles a president whose radical proposals for restructuring welfare and creating a national health insurance program remain relevant today, in her estimate. She also commends Nixon's expanded enforcement of affirmative action, bold reorganization of federal agencies and redistribution of power away from Congress and the federal bureaucracy toward state and local governments. Hoff, a professor of history at the University of Indiana, draws on her interviews with Nixon and his advisers, as well as recently released Nixon White House papers and tapes, to shed light on his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, his tense relations with Henry Kissinger and his rationalizations and paranoid insecurities. (Aug.)

Hoff, an Indiana University historian and senior editor of University Publications' microfilm edition of Nixon's presidential papers, presents a scrupulously researched analysis of Nixon's domestic and foreign policies and of Watergate. Placed in a "historical rather than histrionic perspective," Nixon is revealed as a progressive Republican burdened by an aprincipled nature that clouded his awareness of "conventional morality or ethical standards." Surprisingly, Hoff praises Nixon primarily for his domestic policies; revenue sharing, a proposed guaranteed income, and plans for national health insurance were liberal by today's standards. Nixon's foreign policy accomplishments, including detente, Middle East treaties, and relations with the Third World, were ephemeral and often subverted by Henry Kissinger, the ego-driven security adviser. Unlike most Nixon revisionists, Hoff believes that Nixon's obstruction of justice during Watergate warranted impeachment but that his overall accomplishments and his numerous books will ensure his rehabilitation. Hoff's important study synthesizes the latest research and offers interpretations that all serious Nixon scholars must consider. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, Pa.