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The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority

About the Book

The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority

Patrick J. Buchanan, bestselling author and former aide and, later, senior advisor to Richard Nixon, tells the definitive story of Nixon's resurrection and rise to the presidency.

After suffering stinging defeats in the 1960 presidential election and the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Richard Nixon's political career was proclaimed dead by everyone. Yet on January 20, 1969, just six years after he lost in California, he would stand taking the oath of office as the 37th President of the United States. How did he resurrect his political career and reunite the Republican Party?

In THE GREATEST COMEBACK, bestselling author Patrick J. Buchanan --- who, beginning in 1966, served as one of two staff members to Nixon and who would become a senior advisor in the White House after 1968 --- gives a first-hand account of those pivotal years, in which Nixon worked to reverse his political fortunes in a decade marked by civil rights protests, social revolution, The Vietnam War, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, riots, and the rise of the New Left. Through excerpts from over 1,000 personal memos from Buchanan to Nixon and back, readers watch first-hand as Nixon pulls the far-flung strands of the Republican party --- from the conservative base that backed Barry Goldwater to the liberal wing that backed George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller, not to mention an ascendant Ronald Reagan --- into the victorious coalition that won him the White House. How Richard Nixon united the party behind him may offer insights into how the Republican Party today can bring together its warring factions.

THE GREATEST COMEBACK is an intimate portrayal of the 37th President and a fascinating fly on-the-wall account of one of the most remarkable American political stories of the 20th century.

The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority
by Patrick J. Buchanan

  • Publication Date: May 26, 2015
  • Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics
  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Crown Forum
  • ISBN-10: 0553418653
  • ISBN-13: 9780553418651