Nixon Reconsidered

An eye-opening look at the man whose notoriety over Watergate and whose accomplishments in foreign policy have made us foget that he was one of our most innovative modern presidents on matters of dome

Publishers Weekly

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.)

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.