Martha: The Life of Martha Mitchell

by Winzola McLendon

The journalist who was Martha Mitchell's close friend and confidante in her last years offers a behind-the-scenes look at what motivated the most controversial woman in recent American politics and what happened to her after Watergate.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, History, Biography Memoir

480 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 1979

Reviews

[Heidi DiLorenzo]

Does anyone know where I can get my hands on a copy of this book? I just finished watching Gaslit on Starz where Ms.Mitchell is portrayed by Julia Roberts and it was fascinating. I’m dying to read the original biography of this incredible woman.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could read this book every week and never tire of it! Masterfully written biography of Martha Mitchell. It used to be called Martha the Mouth who Roared!

Now kind of unkown to the current generation this woman was hilarious and yet a true patriot! Initially a kool aid drinker for the Nixon administration as she saw the reality of the Vietnam war she began to speak out, then when she became privy (Through eaves dropping ...is there any BETTER way) to the shennanigans being pulled by Nixon , her husband Attorney General John Mitchell and CREEP the comittee to re elect the president, she handled it the way all southern women of breeding and culture do, she locked herself in a bathroom with a phone and drank til she was drunk enough to work up the courage to phone the papers and beat around the bush at what she KNEW was really going on! OH MARTHA I MISS YOU! Read this book you will be alternately horrified and in stitches! I was ...still am!

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy was this book very interesting. From front to back and it was a great read. This is how books should be written versus how they do it today. I found out that a wife with lose lips can make a mess of an administration and in the old days this matter. Today anything goes if you have the right letter behind your voting record. Todays politicians should all be taken to the wood shed. Martha Mitchell had a very sad ending to her life and she brought it on herself. I would recommend this to anybody who was interested in politics. To bad the journilst today are not interested in finding the truth with administrations they are more or less mouth pieces for their beliefs.

[Lawson Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is about as honest as a historical biography gets. Martha Mitchell and McLendon had a lasting, if rocky, friendship so I went into this read assuming that it might paint Martha in a mostly positive light. I was pleasantly surprised to that that I was wrong; this book shines a light on all aspects of Martha's life. McLendon describes Martha as an enigma: one day the life of the party and the next a tyrant; one day a friend and the next an enemy. It's a rollercoaster of a tale; I found myself rooting for Martha in some chapters and rooting starkly against her in others.

McLendon constructs the Martha Mitchell character and relays her story with a commendable level of objectivity. There is no speculation, there is no extrapolation. Each sentence is another fact building on layers and layers of other facts. At times, it even feels as though the writing is restrained and that there were subjective details that McLendon would have liked to have added, but she didn't add those details and I believe that the objectivity of the writing and storytelling made Martha's story all the more heart-rending.

It becomes clear when reading the book that McLendon was one of Martha's closest friends. Their relationship was a complicated one - McLendon being a reporter/journalist and Martha being very much in the public eye - but it was real and it was one of the near-constants in Martha's life. Despite this, McLendon didn't write a book that leaned too heavily on her own perspective of Martha's life. It is a perfectly balanced and objective biography.

I'll be honest: I stumbled upon this book after watching the Drunk History short about Martha's kidnapping on Comedy Central. I was expecting, therefore, to read the biography of an American superhero who, behind the scenes, was the true reason that the Nixon Administration fell; a story about another woman who's triumph was stolen by a man. This is not exactly the biography I read. Martha was no superhero. She was as flawed as anyone else and possibly more than most. She was misguided in many of her beliefs and set in her ways. She was a stubborn alcoholic with a pill addiction. She was dramatic and at times dangerous and had a taste for victim mentality.

But superheros don't exist and Martha might just be as close as they come. She was flawed, but she was real. She told it like she saw it (however misguided), she was the belle of the ball, she was a political activist in her own right, and she was a friend to many. Martha Mitchell watched her world crumble on more than one occasion and found the strength to go on each time. She was resilient.

"Martha was right."

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Super interesting read especially after having watched “Gaslit”. I don’t think the book was carefully edited as parts were repetitive but if not for that I would have rated it 5 stars. Amazing how she went from being a Nixon fan to seeing the truth and how her husband began as a Nixon hater to a sycophant. Some of the things she said about how wrong it was not to have prosecuted Nixon ring true today. “MARTHA WAS RIGHT.”

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter is fascinating. I did not enjoy the structure of the book. Non-linear story telling, if it is done well, can be interesting. But here it became a ramble, sometimes re-telling the same anecdote from what seemed like the same standpoint, for no reason I could figure out. Still, it was worth the read.

[Natasha Blough · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally read Martha's book. Martha was right. Its very sad what the Nixon administration did to her. I need to read about John Mitchell.

[Sandra D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biography of Martha Mitchell, wife of Nixon's attorney general.