Nixon, Volume 1: The Education of a Politician 1913 - 1962

By Stephen E. Ambrose

From acclaimed biographer Stephen E. Ambrose comes the lifetime of the most elusive and fascinating American political figures, Richard M. Nixon.

From his tough boyhood and earnest formative years to bis ruthless political campaigns for Congress and Senate to his defeats in '60 and '62, Nixon emerges life-size in all his complexity. Ambrose charts the peaks and valleys of Nixon's first fifty years — his severe aid as a freshman congressman of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; his involvement in the home Committee on Un-American actions; his competitive pursuit of Alger Hiss; his ambivalent dating with Eisenhower; and extra.

It is the consummate biography; it's a gorgeous political odyssey.

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Command at either Bougainville and eco-friendly Island. He demonstrated the effective liaison which made attainable the speedy provide via air of significant fabric and key group of workers, and the advised evacuation of conflict casualties from those stations to rear components. ”19 It was once now not precisely the equivalent of Jack Kennedy’s heroism quotation, to make certain, yet that used to be now not Nixon’s fault. He had performed the easiest he may, and the simplest that may be performed, in a difficult and demanding activity. He had earned his “well performed. ” IT was once a “lonely warfare” for the lads within the South Pacific, Nixon wrote in his memoirs, choked with “interminable sessions” of anticipating a few motion. The “oppressive monotony,” now not the japanese, used to be the enemy. To fill in his time, Nixon wrote Pat each day. He learn the Bible via many times, and previous copies of lifestyles journal. He discovered to drink, and smoke cigars, and to have interaction in bull periods. yet ordinarily, he killed time via taking part in poker. the sport turned an obsession with him. It was once “an impossible to resist diversion . . . instructive . . . interesting and ecocnomic. ” He performed nightly, it doesn't matter what. Charles Lindbergh got here to eco-friendly Island on an inspection journey. Nixon’s CO invited him to a small dinner in Lindbergh’s honor. Nixon declined—he had a poker video game that evening. 20 The blameless Quaker boy used to be getting into his manhood. Nixon was once a minimum of nearly as good a poker participant as he used to be a CO. The mark of simply how strong he used to be got here within the type of the conflicting thoughts of his fellow avid gamers. One, Lester Wroble, acknowledged, “Dick by no means misplaced, yet he used to be by no means a huge winner. He appeared consistently to finish up a online game someplace among $30 and $60 forward. That didn’t appear like showy winnings, but if you expanded it daily, I’d say he did very well. ” one other participant declared, “There are 100 army officials who will inform you that Nick by no means misplaced a cent at poker. ”21 Others insisted that he by no means raised until he knew he used to be retaining the profitable hand, and ordinarily performed a conservative video game. while avid gamers acquired under the influence of alcohol and commenced throwing their cash round in hopeless bluffs, Nixon was once there to collect within the pot. yet on the correct mental second, he himself may bluff. Lieutenant James Udall acknowledged, “Nixon was once nearly as good a poker participant as, if now not higher than, an individual we had ever visible. He performed a quiet online game, yet was once no longer frightened of taking possibilities. He wasn’t scared of working a bluff. occasionally the stakes have been beautiful huge, yet Nick had bold and an aptitude for realizing what to do. ”22 POKER IS the necessary man’s video game, and within the military, in wartime, it reaches its optimum shape as a try of will and nerve. In its vintage environment, it really is performed lower than a unmarried unshielded mild bulb, the desk coated with overflowing ashtrays, cigar smoke thick adequate to chop in the course of the room, a drink in entrance of each participant, one or gigantic and 3 or 4 little piles of chips or funds beside the beverages, the pot within the middle of the desk containing the bets. The gamers are a mix of males who're bored to tears all day, on a daily basis, and may do whatever for pleasure, and males who've simply lower back from or are happening a strive against project.

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