Watergate

by Thomas Mallon

From one of our most esteemed historical novelists, a remarkable retelling of the Watergate scandal, as seen through a kaleidoscope of its colorful perpetrators and investigators. For all the monumental documentation that Watergate generated—uncountable volumes of committee records, court transcripts, and memoirs—it falls at last to a novelist to perform the work of inference (and invention) that allows us to solve some of the scandal’s greatest mysteries (who did erase those eighteen-and-a-half minutes of tape?) and to see this gaudy American catastrophe in its human entirety.  In Watergate, Thomas Mallon conveys the drama and high comedy of the Nixon presidency through the urgent perspectives of seven characters we only thought we knew before now, moving readers from the private cabins of Camp David to the klieg lights of the Senate Caucus Room, from the District of Columbia jail to the Dupont Circle mansion of Theodore Roosevelt’s sharp-tongued ninety-year-old daughter (“The clock is dick-dick-dicking”), and into the hive of the Watergate complex itself, home not only to the Democratic National Committee but also to the president’s attorney general, his recklessly loyal secretary, and the shadowy man from Mississippi who pays out hush money to the burglars. Praised by Christopher Hitchens for his “splendid evocation of Washington,” Mallon achieves with Watergate a scope and historical intimacy that surpasses even what he attained in his previous novels, as he turns a “third-rate burglary” into a tumultuous, first-rate entertainment.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Politics, Historical, Audiobook, Book Club, American History

450 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Thomas Mallon is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author's crisp wit and interest in the "bystanders" to larger historical events. He is the author of ten books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers (recently adapted into a miniseries by the same name), Watergate, Finale, Landfall, and most recently Up With the Sun. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the John F. Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).
He is a former literary editor of Gentleman's Quarterly, where he wrote the "Doubting Thomas" column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005 to 2006.
His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watergate is an immensely complicated scandal with a cast of characters as varied as a Tolstoy novel.
Bob Woodward

Trading arms for hostages in the Iran Contra Affair or starting an illegal war in Iraq are events we would expect to take influential people down, and yet amazing enough, it seems to usually be something insignificant like the stained dress of an intern, tax evasion, or a third rate burglary that brings powerful people to their knees.

I was 5 years old when the Watergate break-in occurred, but as I got older I would occasionally hear my Dad talk about "Tricky Dick." A life long Republican, except for a brief flirtation with JFK, Dad never liked Nixon, but voted for him twice over "those damn liberals."



Nixon squeaks out the 1968 election against Hubert Humphrey, saved the embarrassment of losing to another Kennedy when Bobby is assassinated in California (my Dad admits he would have voted for Bobby.) In the 1972 polling, Nixon was well ahead of his challenger, George McGovern, which makes the amateurish attempt to bug the phones at the DNC all the more tragic/self-destructive/self-fulfilling.

When I opened this book the first thing I noticed was a four page list of "The Players". I didn't give it much thought until I jumped into the first few pages of the book and found myself flipping back to the list to refresh my memory which kept me from living on Wikipedia. In the beginning I was discombobulated, overwhelmed with what felt like shotgun blasts of characters. Mallon chooses to open with Fred LaRue, an important but lesser known character in the Watergate scandal, which made me feel very insecure with my grasp of Watergate history.


Fred LaRue

Right off the bat I'm thinking who in the Sam Hill is this guy. I had to take a shuddering breath, pour myself another cup of strong coffee and leap back into my 1970s destination time machine. Mallon takes us into the thoughts and actions of the characters, revealing crucial dialogue. Who said what and when they said it becomes an important timeline in the prosecution of the Watergate participants. He teases the reader with a cryptic white envelope with MOOT written on the outside, with questions of why was Howard Hunt in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated, and Pat Nixon's ongoing affair (WHAT?).

I especially liked the time that Mallon allowed me to spend with Pat Nixon and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Absolutely, to me, the best and most fascinating sections of the book. Alice, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, had an ongoing relationship with the Nixons and was treated as a political oracle by members of both parties. She was fond of Richard Nixon because she saw a lot of herself in him. She'd come to the house that night because of the look on his face--the creased, naked expression on this darkest of dark horses, this misanthrope in a flesh-presser's profession, able to succeed from cunning and a talent for denying reality at close range. She didn't share his general dinginess: she smiled in delight, however viciously, whereas he smiled only in a kind of animal desperation. But she shared the darkness beneath and the capacity for denial; she could sometimes change or negate reality just with her contempt for it."

Mallon is able to use Alice to reveal more of the gossipy parts of the time period. Who is sleeping with whom, how people are tied together, and apply her withering, witty remarks to better define some of the players. Someone talks to her about being out of money. She says she was poor once. They asked her what did she do? She replied I did a Lucky Strike advertisement. Of course, I had to track down the ad, shown below.



Pat Nixon in a moment of exasperation with Richard about his enemies list that became so public during the Watergate investigation summed up her husband's sick perversion to hate and be hated. "I would have made an enemies list twice as long as yours and Colson's, and I would have done something to get the people on it. Anything to be rid of them forever--the way I thought they were gone from our lives after '60, and then '62, and then--surely!--at this time last year. I hate your enemies, but you love them. You love their existence; they're what gives you your own. That's why I'm sick with anger at you: for bringing us to the top of this awful mountain. We're never going to get back down without being devoured!"

Wow Pat, gees... you can whip the guy all you want, but he'll just giggle and ask for more.

I loved this book. I lived and breathed Watergate for the 24 hours it took me to devour this book. I expanded my knowledge and understanding about Watergate by leaps and bounds. This is not a sympathetic portrayal nor does it harshly tear people down. It is just an honest, even handed account of the scandal and the personalities involved. Nixon was epically paranoid, moody, and tended to surround himself with people that reflected his own twisted world views. He had no compunction about breaking the law or ruining careers to keep himself safely in power. He was no more corrupt than the average president, in my humble assessment. His biggest flaw was that people just really didn't like him, and in return he really didn't like people very much either. When the time came for judgement, he found few friends offering a helping hand. Amazing to me that this man could have such a long career in politics. When he says, so historically, "I'm not a crook," I believe he was trying to convince himself of that fact more than he was the American people.

Nixon was a tragic character who would certainly have provided good fodder for the English Bard Shakespeare.


Howard Hunt looking SHADY.

I'm off to see if I can figure out what the heck Howard Hunt, a man who loathed John F. Kennedy, was doing in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963.

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[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has to be borne in mind that Nixon and his pal Kissinger were the warlords who ordered the carpet bombing of North Vietnam, the secret bombing of Cambodia (not secret to the Cambodians but they were under strict instructions to keep quiet about it) and were okay with the napalming of men, women and children in those grim countries in that far-off time. It has to be borne in mind because otherwise you find yourself getting to like Nixon. He suffers so very much! He’s the best villain. He’s like the roly-poly toy in budgerigar cages, you give him a peck and he rolls backwards and then bobs right back up again. So you peck him again.

And he crashed and burned so spectacularly! Talk about ups and downs - November 1972 – wins re-election in a truly spectacular fashion – he got 18 million more votes than McGovern, he won FORTY-NINE states – and 21 months later he resigned before he was impeached. Fantastic. And for those 21 months he was twisting, burning, frothing, moaning, groaning, grinning, winning, losing, bruising, sinning, beginning, not mending but ending, not waving but drowning, muttering, gurning, toiling, roiling, boiling (it was hot), gambling, shambling, nocturnally and conversationally rambling, aiding and abetting, deeply regretting, thinking, drinking, listening to tapes of himself listening to tapes of himself, cursing, rehearsing, he was maudlin, mawkish, hawkish, defiant, furious, curious, self-deprecating, awkward, always awkward, sheepish, he was besmirched, confident, craven, lonely, garrulous, drooling (when in hospital), fooling (no one but himself), mewling, he was lamenting and he was dementing. He was the dark and brilliant bucketful of American pain.




Thomas Mallon gets hold of Watergate and fondles all the details and lays them out before you, his offhand insights and westwingish dialogue are just the ticket For instance – post- resignation, Nixon is writing a book about foreign policy –

"It would display the kind of expertise people were willing to concede to him, they way they'd admit the bird man of Alcatraz did have a way with canaries"

but I was kind of a bit huh like did I miss something or what because there seem to be some pretty big things that just like glide by peripherally, I mean I would have thought it warranted a whole scene to itself when Nixon first thought – you know what? I might have to actually really resign over this. You don't get that. There's not much angst. The bit players take the lion's share. See Rose Mary Woods erase that tape! All singing and dancing! See Howard Hunt skulk! See some batty old dame ramble on about Roosevelt! Look in vain for Woodward & Bernstein – they ain't nowhere except three namechecks. And Deep Throat is just a dubious movie, which Pat Nixon will never see. We hope.




I bet you wouldn't have guessed that Alexander Haig (see him twinkle!) gets the best jokes :
Visiting Nixon in hospital :

"Viral pneumonia, no complications – finally something around here without complications!"

and later

"Good news, Mr President! The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company says the penalty for a person's recording phone calls without telling the other party is limited to removal of the violator's equipment. And considering the importance of maintaining phone service at the White House, they've agreed to waive that."

***

This is a 4 star novel brought down to three, I'm very sorry to say, by Mr Mallon's insistence on spending too many pages on a couple of the dullest parts of the whole tangle – octogenarian soirees and the Howard Hunt/Fred LaRue/Clarine Lander thing was yawnsome, all the time I wanted to jump into HR Haldeman's closet and overhear his bedroom conversations, all of that. And then, you might have thought that the gruesome Watergate revelations would have provoked some great blazing stand-up rows amongst the cast of characters, but according to Mr Mallon, you'd be wrong. His novel drives all the president's men around in a big airconditioned Rolls Royce, you can hardly hear any of the disagreeable offstage booing. It's all pretty quiet.

The Watergate scandal shows the success and the failure of American politics – the system allowed a morally bankrupt politician to reach the very top, twice, but then found him out and destroyed him. That was an American success. Then again, he was destroyed because of a third-rate comedy-capers chickenshit burglary, and not because he ordered the killing of thousands of civilians in a couple of Asian countries. They busted him, but really, it was for the wrong crime.

But for those who love to hate Richard Nixon, this is a must read.

[Kemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notorious prankster Richard Nixon and his wacky pals pull a practical joke on their political rivals. Hilarity ensues.

Watergate has been examined backwards and forwards, but Thomas Mallon attempts to put a new spin on it here by telling the story as historical fiction from the viewpoints of several people and examining the damage done to those involved or close to Nixon. Among the key players are E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent and author of spy thrillers who was one of the key planners of the break-in. Fred LaRue worked off-the-books for the president’s reelection campaign and becomes the bagman for pay-offs to try and keep everyone’s mouth shut. Elliot Richardson is a rising star in the Republican party who keeps getting promoted to high profile government jobs and who has his eye on eventually making it to the Oval Office.

Rosemary Woods is Nixon’s personal secretary and so fiercely loyal to her boss that she has a hard time controlling her anger towards anyone she feels has crossed him. Pat Nixon hopes to fade into the background during Nixon’s second term and is quietly pining for the lover she had to leave when Nixon ran for president in 1968. One of the most intriguing and funniest characters is the ancient daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, Alice Longworth. Washington players still have to pay tribute to her and fear her sharp tongue. She has a soft spot for Richard Nixon and watches the Watergate scandal play out with the critical eye of someone who knows how the game is played better than anyone. And there’s Nixon himself who swings between self-pity and anger as presidency is consumed by the scandal.

One of the big questions that’s always hung over the break-in is why they did it in the first place. Nixon was crushing McGovern in the polls and everyone knew that the Republicans would cruise to victory. (I think it’s because Nixon and his group of rat fuckers were so used to conducting their business this way that it didn’t occur to them that it wasn’t necessary and a stupid risk.) The twist here is that the characters don’t really know themselves, and when Mallon provides a fictional answer, it’s more of a comedy of errors than a vast conspiracy. A lot of the reasons for why things happened are mundane enough to seem plausible like the way Mallon provides a simple excuse for the infamous 18 minute gap on one of the Oval Office tapes.

All in all, it was a well written and interesting take on the scandal, and I learned some bits of trivia. (It’s crazy how many of the people involved actually lived at Watergate like Rosemary Woods and Fred LaRue.) However, by trying to portray the break-in as being caused by an odd set of circumstances, it almost seems to be trying to excuse Nixon for it. Even if Watergate was the result of some kind of mixed signals, it was still possible because the likes of Gordon Liddy had been working for the White House and cooking up a variety of dirty tricks that all the top dogs, including Nixon, encouraged.

While Mallon came up with some interesting causes for events, he never delves into why so many people were so loyal to a charm-impaired paranoid power-grubber like Richard Nixon, and in a story that explores the psychology of Watergate that feels like a fairly big oversight.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Mallon takes one of the most (in)famous events in 20th century American politics and places it at the centre of this highly-energetic piece of historical fiction. As the novel opens, the break-in at the Watergate Hotel buzzes around town, though it was far from a successful event. Name and finger pointing continue to swirl as money changes hands during clandestine meetings, all in an attempt to distance the core actors from those in the White House who sanctioned the illicit activity. Slowly, discussions of what happened leave the streets of Washington and migrate to the Oval Office, where Nixon and some of his inner circle have begun to discuss events and how it ought to be handled. With a victory over McGovern a certainty, panic over who will say what when the thumb screws are applied seems to be the order of the day. Furthering the panic is the revelation that Nixon tapes many of his Oval Office conversations and those in a number of other key locations. While these recordings covered all discussions on countless topics, only those pertaining to the Watergate affair seem to be of interest to Congress. Legal manoeuvres cannot block their release and Nixon has to come to terms with this, as he sees his presidency circle the proverbial drain. Mallon adds interesting side plots by following the lives of a handful of characters, both in their daily lives and as they relate to the Watergate mess. It is only when the political shell games no longer seem effective that true panic sets in, with firings, disassociation, and accusations fly helter-skelter. As impeachment seems all but certain, Nixon leaves the sinking ship that is his presidency and lets Ford takeover before Congress can act. In an act that even Mallon cannot definitively speculate upon, Ford pardons Nixon of all wrongdoing and leaves him to bask in the life of a former president. A brilliantly crafted story that takes actual historical events and fictionalises them just enough to offer theories and suppositions, Mallon shows how effective a writer he is and is sure to garner much praise for this piece.

This being my first Mallon novel, I was not sure what I ought to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to see the attention to detail and varied approaches used to support the evolving narrative. In some other historical fiction that I have read, the author explained that the use of 'fiction' must be placed thereupon, as there is no way to substantiate some of the dialogue between characters. Even with use of the transcripts related to the Nixon Tapes, Mallon would have to concoct some of the banter between individuals, but does so in such a way that the reader might think these were actual conversation on the days listed. Mallon's use of dates and locations pulls the reader into wondering if these things actually took place based on this crisp timeline and how things began to unravel for Nixon after his fated lies were caught on tape. Bringing in a cross-section of people from the time, Mallon allows the reader not only to experience the events through a number of perspectives, but to offer insights and sentiments that are unique to some who saw the events in their own way. Pat Nixon, Eliot Richardson, Howard Hunt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth to name but a few of the characters who pepper the pages of the novel and branch out on their own journeys. Mallon has done a stunning job balancing on that precarious spot between reality and constructed expectation, leaving the reader to bask in a novel that pulls no punches. If all of Mallon's work is this captivating, he has surely found a new fan in me.

Kudos, Mr. Mallon for delivering a powerful expression on events that shaped much of the latter decades of the 20th century. I cannot wait to see how you handled some of the other events about which you have written.

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[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Actually, he would rewind things all the way back to that meeting at Justice where Liddy had presented his grand plans at the easel. Given a do-over, LaRue would have Mitchell throw Liddy out the window.”

”He will leave it to Julie to figure things out when he is gone for good to see how he can be mainstreamed into history with the rest of the men, mostly unimpressive, who had preceded and followed him in office.”


The first time I read this book my appreciation was sabotaged by my expectations. I was expecting something louder, faster, and more exciting. Instead, I found a quiet, muted story that moved at the timeless pace of human regret. Reading it through again (as part of my deep dive into the Watergate scandal) and now knowing what I could expect from it, I’ve gained a greater appreciation of this odd telling of America’s most notorious scandal.

Thomas Mallon told this story using multiple different rotating point of view characters, all of them on the White House side of the scandal. There’s Nixon himself, his wife Pat, Nixon’s fiercely loyal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, Howard Hunt and his doomed wife, Dorothy, Elliot Richardson, the Boston Brahmin who served in Nixon’s cabinet in multiple positions, among several others. Most intriguing of these are Alice Roosevelt Longworth, rapscallion daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and grand old dame of the Republican Party, and Fred LaRue, soft spoken Southern gentleman and most unassuming and mysterious member of the cover up conspiracy.

Watergate is a most interior novel. It prioritizes its characters inner lives, motivations, self questionings, regrets, and personal secrets above the actions of the unfolding scandal. Watergate itself sometimes seems little more than a MacGuffin that allows us to examine these characters. And Mallon neither vilifies nor justifies — he humanizes.

Being fiction, Mallon is able to create answers for some of Watergate’s most enduring mysteries. What was on the eighteen and a half minutes of missing tape and why was it erased? Why was the inane and seemingly pointless burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee attempted in the first place? Mallon proposes answers as low key and human as is this quietly brilliant novel.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weaving fiction with fact – particularly when the subject matter is as documented, analyzed, evaluated, dramatized, and talked about as Watergate – is a particularly audacious task. I thought I had exhaustively read just about anything that could be said about Watergate. I was wrong.

Thomas Mallon’s new book is absolutely brilliant and unlike anything I’ve ever read about those dark days in the early 1970s. His real theme is what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness.” In a locale where political life is a gaudy composition of intrigue, farce, and pathos -- in a liquor-soaked insular community where everyone is sleeping with everyone else and the object is to win the game, not serve the people—what is truth anyway? Do the gravest lies have an element of truth? Does truth contain its share of lies? And what does it all matter?

Mr. Mallon subtlety suggests that with all the rumors, recreations, and complexities of political life, it almost doesn’t matter what is true and what isn’t. Did Pat Nixon really have a lover through the Watergate years, a retired trust-and-estates widower? Did money man Fred LaRue kill his father accidentally or by design during a duck hunting expedition? Did Rose Woods erase the infamous tapes because she was ordered to or because – just maybe – she was a little inebriated and a whole lot angry? What was behind Nixon’s maudlin final speech as he departed the presidency? These are just some of the more interesting questions that Mr. Mallon poses.

If you’re like me, you’ll run to the Internet to google all these – and more. The mastery of his prose is that you will not be able to detect what is fact and what is not. And curiously, the more you read, the more it won’t matter.

You’ll meet a Nixon who is genuinely perplexed by the turn of events. “The actual globe could fall apart at any time, but moments ago this throng in front of him had no doubt whistled and hollered for the Post boys, all for saving the world from what was –truthfully – a third-rate burglary.” Unlike the “good versus evil” that most of us regard Watergate to be, we read that LBJ had commanded the bugging of Nixon’s campaign plane (Or did he? That’s part of the fun of this book. Nixon regarded the burglary as business as usual and sadly, it probably was.

Throughout, Alice Longworth, the octogenarian first-born of Teddy Roosevelt, stands at a distance and also in the center of things, clearly noting the farce that D.C. continually acts out. All the "characters" you know are here – Nixon, Agnew, the elusive E. Howard Hunt, John Mitchell and his out-of-control wife Martha, Elliot Richardson (the Boy Scout who loves to throw back a drink or two), Rose Woods, and Nixon’s family. They’re here in ways you know them and in ways you have never seen them before. I strongly suspect that at the end of 2012, this book will be high on my “Best Of 2012” list.

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some authors are such favorites that you want to drop everything to read their new book the moment it's released. For me, Thomas Mallon is one of those must-read-now authors. He never disappoints. Dewey Defeats Truman, Bandbox, Mrs Paine's Garage and the Murder of John F Kennedy, although not what we traditionally mean when we call a book a page-turner are, nonetheless, books that you don't want to stop reading, the kind of book that never needs a bookmark because you don't put it down for longer than 10 minutes all day.

Watergate: A Novel may be Mallon's best book yet. It can be tricky fictionalizing people as well-known as Richard Nixon, and when it's someone who was as bitterly hated as Nixon, it takes a deft touch. Mallon attempts in this novel to explain the almost inexplicable phenomenon that we call Watergate - why did the Republicans try to bug the Democratic campaign headquarters, why did they bungle it, how did it move from two inches on the bottom of page 36 of the Washington Post to two-inch headlines on the front page above the fold? How did it go from a third-rate burglary attempt to a near-impeachment of the president?

A great many of the characters whose names were all over the news in the early 70s and are now nearly forgotten play their parts in this story, which unfolds through the eyes of Fred LaRue, the dollar a year director of the Committee to Re-elect the President (commonly called Creep), Howard Hunt, Pat Nixon, Eliot Richardson, and primarily, Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's secretary. Alice Roosevelt Longworth plays a sort of Greek chorus, alternately hilarious and touchingly pathetic. Most of the people in Nixon's orbit are treated as real people, with good intentions and mixed motives. Some decisions are well meant although illegal like handing out money to pay for lawyers for the "plumbers" as the burglars were called (because they were trying to stop leaks to the press.) Other motives were less benign, like trying to cover up the involvement of administration figures as far up as the attorney general.

The tragic irony is that Nixon knew nothing beforehand of this senseless scheme to break into the Democratic headquarters. In part because of bad advice from people like H R Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, in part because of the irrational hatred of his political opponents, the press, and the Washington Post in particular, and in part because he decided when told about it to try to cover it up, a basically non-event devoured Nixon's presidency. Near the end of the book, in a fictional flashback set in a Georgetown bar, the motive for the entire fiasco is explained with searing irony.

Anyone can read this book with pleasure, even if they don't know Jeb Stuart Magruder from John Mitchell or the Saturday Night Massacre from the enemies list. Having lived through it all, however, enriches the reader's understanding of how a man who should have been remembered as one of our great presidents became a disgraced outcast and the only president to resign from office.

2012 No 35

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my historical fiction genre study we have had the debate over how far back in time a book must be set in order for it to be considered 'historical'. Generally we have agreed that the author needs to have researched the time period/events and not just be making a record of his memories. Therefore today's 30-year-old could write historical fiction about the Vietnam War even though many of his readers may have lived through events at that time.

I'd like to add a caveat to that definition: don't read "historical fiction" if you lived through and have read lots of nonfiction about the event. It will just make you angry.

Watergate happened during my early college years. I followed the events closely and watched the evening re-broadcasts of the testimony before the Ervin Committee. I knew the names of all of the minor characters (such as Robert C. Odle (the first person to testify before the Senate Committee) and Alexander Butterfield (who revealed that there was a taping system int he Oval Office). I read the Woodward and Bernstein books, Judge Sirica's book, the book about Deep Throat, and pride myself on having not read any books by the indicted conspirators. Yeah, I hated those Nixon guys and think Nixon got what he deserved. Mallon's eventual reason for why the burglary was ordered is so fictional as to be absurd. It is interesting that the persons he creates the most fiction about are dead.

Obviously a work of fiction is not intended to be history, though sometimes it does help us understand historical periods a bit better. Unfortunately this book has caused me to reevaluate any future reading of historical fiction. I think I need to steer clear of any historical fiction which intends to reflect a real historical person or specific historical events. Writing about a fictional Civil War soldier who is afraid of going into battle is one thing (see "The Red Badge of Courage") or having fictional characters reflect on events of their time (see Kate Sedley's series on Roger the Chapman) is fine, but to fictionalize the lives of real people within the lifetime of people who knew them seems too much for me.

I didn't hate this book enough to not finish it, but I experienced a lot of eye-rolling throughout and wanted to throw it across the room when done.

Although I will add this -- if you like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, you'll love Alice Roosevelt Longworth here.

[CatBookMom · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first time of voting for president was the 1972 election. So the Watergate scandal was part of my life for all those months. This book is categorized as fiction, but reads like a history. Dug out my pb copy of All the President's Men, which is falling apart; I may have to read it again.

I was surprised at how this audiobook kept my attention; got a lot of knitting done.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical fiction is closely related to Impressionist painting; neither give a complete picture, nor do they purport to tell the truth about their subjects; however, both the painter and the author present a particular vision about their subject. Thomas Mallon’s historical novel Watergate does not pretend to offer an objective history of that long ago scandal but it does, like Monet’s lilies, draw us into an environment of depth and surface, of sunlight and shadow.


Mallon’s book provides access to the minds of a number of the major players. It is a selective company and not comprehensive. It includes President Richard Nixon, First Lady Pat Nixon, Rosemary Woods, E. Howard Hunt, Fred LaRue and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. Many other historical personalities play significant parts but I think it fair to say the story plays out through these six people. Mallon’s book is as much a psychological novel as an historical one. What we experience is the onrushing wave of scandal and how that affects the players. This is where the impressionist comparison occurs. The novel, in tandem with the historical facts, moves among the emotions and speeches of those caught up in what began as a minor burglary and ended in the resignation of a sitting president. It is not unreasonable to believe that even the most fervent Nixon-hater might feel a glimmer of sadness as the events unfold.

As the book is not a history and Mallon does not provide any clues as to what conversations might be accurate and which fictional the reader is left in many instances with only a emotional reaction. That, however, is not necessarily a bad thing as it puts some perspective on the events. Mallon’s speeches, real or imagined, often ring with a certain poignancy. The book begins in May 1972, on the eve of the Watergate burglary and ends, save for a brief postscript, on the day of Nixon’s resignation.

How did it all happen, this all-American tragedy? Mallon has Nixon trying to explain it to Pat on the night of the resignation.

“I’m so … mystified!” He groped for this word she couldn’t remember him ever using, and once he found it he started to sob. “I don’t know how it happened, how it began. Half the time I hear myself on the tape, I’m barely remembering who works for who over at the Committee. I hear myself acting like I know more than I do—pretending to be on top of the thing so I don’t embarrass myself with whoever’s in the room—especially Ehrlichman. Christ, I can’t now apologize for what I can barely understand!”

e

If a reader leans only to the “Tricky Dick” hypothesis, then this quote will not suffice. For me, at least in these first days before the crime, it is possible to imagine a man in over his depth agreeing to something he would not understand until a year later.

Mallon has Alice Roosevelt Longworth observe of Nixon in 1957:

“ . . .the creased, naked expression on this darkest of dark horses, this misanthrope in a flesh-presser’s profession, able to succeed from cunning and a talent for denying reality at close range.”

Perhaps that, the “talent for denying reality at close range” explains, at least in part, the enigma of Richard Nixon.

Excellent book. 4.5 stars

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early in Thomas Mallon’s new novel about the Watergate scandal, President Nixon’s secretary wonders when her boss will get his own marble temple on the Mall. It’s the sort of arresting moment of naivete that frequently punctuates this witty, surprisingly humane dramatization of that vaudevillian chapter in American politics.

Four decades have passed since five bungling burglars were arrested in the Democratic National Committee headquarters, indelibly contaminating a posh commercial-residential complex with the stink of our nation’s most bizarre political ordeal. Many of the participants have served their time (in prison and on television), written their best-selling memoirs, and passed into those great 181 / 2 minutes of oblivion. After Irangate, Whitewatergate, Monicagate and even Nipplegate, the scandal-infused suffix gets tossed around now by people who weren’t even born when the sweaty president looked into the TV cameras and claimed, “I’m not a crook.”

The time is right, then, for a novelist to bring us together again, and perhaps no one is better equipped than this Washington-based writer who has blended political history and speculation so effectively in such books as “Dewey Defeats Truman,” “Henry and Clara” and “Fellow Travelers.” Running up and down what he calls “the always sliding scale of historical fiction,” Mallon entices us back to those frenzied pre-Internet days of the Dictabelt, the smoking gun, the hush money, the Saturday Night Massacre, the Enemies List, Deep Throat, CREEP and “expletive deleted” — the whole, labyrinthine episode that newly sworn-in President Gerald Ford too expansively characterized as “an American tragedy in which we all have played a part.”

While staying close to the chronology of events, Mallon distinguishes his story from the library of books that have come before by shaping “Watergate” in his own inimitable way. Nixon’s the one, of course, and all the spiteful principals are here, too, caught by the author’s delectable humor, from H.R. Haldeman, “the castle’s ogre,” to Chuck Colson, “a kind of mad relative who needed to be kept out of sight.” But Mallon has rotated the cast of characters, pulling some stars out of the limelight and raising others into new prominence. Henry Kissinger just creeps around the edges of the story, “underlining his every offhand insight with some guttural profundity or toadying compliment.” Although you might expect G. Gordon Liddy to be the zany court jester in a comedy about Watergate, he’s mostly offstage here. And those of us suckled on the legend of Woodward and Bernstein will be surprised to find The Washington Post — “Kay’s rag” — reduced to a little footnote in this version of the tale.

Instead, Mallon’s “Watergate” places presidential aide Fred LaRue, “the bagman,” at the center, not as the instigator but as the troubled conscience of the novel. A wealthy, unflappably gracious Mississippi oilman, LaRue is the story’s Nick Carraway, always within and without. He conspires to protect the president even as he hopes to save his own soul, haunted because he shot his father during a hunting trip in Canada years earlier. History, Mallon suggests, is not a clash of titans but just the magnified effects of ordinary people’s secret longings and fears.

That’s nowhere more evident than in the novel’s discerning portrayal of Richard Nixon, who limps through these pages with his eyes fixed on the future. Baffled by the animus of his critics, pained to hurt anyone’s feelings, and haunted by the ghost of his dead brother, the president struggles to maintain his “madly dissociative smile” while hoping that the transcripts of his genius eventually place him in the pantheon of American leaders. It’s a brilliant presentation, subtle and sympathetic but spiked with satire that captures the man in all his crippling self-consciousness, his boundless capacity for self-pity and re-invention. Clinging to “the power of Dr. Peale’s positive thinking,” he sometimes sees himself as Christ crucified, sometimes as Eichmann in a glass cage. Mallon peers deep into “this darkest of dark horses, this misanthrope in a flesh-presser’s profession, able to succeed from cunning and a talent for denying reality at close range.” By the end, this Nixon is no Macbeth; he’s more King Lear, penniless and raving on the wild heath of political disgrace.

But no matter how perceptive his portrayal of Nixon, LaRue, Howard Hunt or Elliot Richardson, to a great extent Mallon has turned the story of Watergate into a story of the women involved. Nowhere is he more discerning than in his depiction of Martha Mitchell, the erratic wife of the attorney general; Rose Mary Woods, the president’s ferociously loyal secretary; and Dorothy Hunt, who blackmails the “plumbers” while her husband mingles old stories of his CIA days with plots for his spy novels. They’re all captivatingly powerful “gals,” trapped in their own chauvinistic ideals, fighting to defend their men past all reason. Pat Nixon, especially, becomes the novel’s tragic heroine. She’s exhausted by the struggles of politics, disgusted by journalists’ casual meanness, desperate for a life of kindness and romance she once briefly enjoyed.

And all these women are outshone by Mallon’s hilarious resurrection of Alice Longworth, the sharp-tongued daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, “a creature of motiveless mischief” whose needlepoint pillow admonishes guests, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” (Indeed, Longworth’s astringent tone flavors the narrative as a whole. Like the “old crone,” Mallon can deliver fatal shots to the base of the ego with just a single phrase.) Pulling generously from the record of Longworth’s quips and put-downs, the author uses her as an ironic gargoyle in a wide-brimmed hat peering down from Dupont Circle on the capital’s parade of vanity and intrigue. No one escapes her tongue. Florida Sen. Edward Gurney looks like “a tennis pro who had just retired to become the hotel gigolo.” In the wake of two prominent senators’ respective scandals — Chappaquiddick and psychotherapy — she dubs Ted Kennedy and Thomas Eagleton “Waterproof and Shockproof.” At Art Buchwald’s birthday party, she greets the popular humorist by saying, “If I’d ever read your column, I’d quote you a line or two from it.”

The novel expands creatively on Longworth’s friendship with Nixon and imagines him as her “kindred spirit,” the two of them sharing some of the story’s most poignant moments. Scores of people were eventually convicted, but “the little cloak and dagger foolishness of Watergate” doesn’t impress Longworth much; she remembers real crises, when “legless Civil War veterans [were] begging in the streets.” That long-range historical perspective combined with her acidic wit conveys the novel’s implicit argument that there’s something absurd about a country as freighted with responsibilities and challenges as ours tearing itself apart over this cheap crime.

But despite the investigative evidence available, Mallon’s reconstruction of events defuses blame — not to excuse anyone in particular but to convey the mad chaos that sweeps up all the president’s men. No matter how Machiavellian Haldeman pretends to be, there is no master plot, no puppeteer, no grand scheme behind all these shenanigans. In the constantly shifting perspectives of “Watergate,” we can see that no one knows where the idea for the break-in came from — Liddy? Jeb Magruder? One of Hunt’s spy thrillers? The coverup isn’t a conspiracy so much as a farce of misdirection and self-delusion, as everyone jockeys in the dark for advancement or plea bargains or book deals or positions in the next administration.

But beware: This novel is strictly BYOW (Bring Your Own Wikipedia). Unless you actually participated in the break-in, “Watergate” will challenge your memory of those internecine months before the president resigned. The author of seven previous novels, Mallon has never before taken on a subject so voluminously over-documented, and he expects his readers to have bloodied their fingertips in the archives. He has no more use for exposition than Haldeman had for alcohol (and if you don’t get that joke, consider yourself warned). Political references and allusions fall from these pages as thickly as confetti at the Republican convention; catch them if you can. Even by Washington standards, this is the name-droppiest novel I’ve ever read — like having lunch at Charlie Palmer’s with the most ambitious congressional aide in the District. The advent of e-readers will make it easy for Washington’s elder elite to search for themselves in these chapters, and Mallon may find himself on several new Enemies Lists. (He certainly won’t be getting Christmas cards from Patrick Buchanan or the senior George Bush.)

His decision to focus so intensely on the interior story of the Watergate participants saves Mallon the trouble of retelling the history that’s been told (and lied about) before. But it also produces a novel that’s daringly undramatic. Essentially everything here happens off-stage, from the break-in all the way to — spoiler alert! — the pardon. There’s no drama from the Senate hearings, no journalistic derring-do. The book remains compelling only because Mallon writes with such wit and psychological acuity as he spins this carousel of characters caught in a scandal that’s constantly fracturing into new crises.

Indeed, despite the country-shaking events constantly breaking in the background, this remains a novel of conversation and introspection, the dark fears of the famous and the humble. Mallon captures all the strange people who “made the Watergate a whole damned world unto itself,” but he also makes that world seem very small. It’s a dramatic reminder that, as Tip O’Neill was fond of saying, all politics is local.

[Neil Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the whole Watergate affair were nothing but a fiction, readers would find it far-fetched and improbable. But Thomas Mallon's novelization of the true events which unfolded in Washington from 1972-1974 serve as a reminder of how the facts can be much stranger than fiction. You couldn't write this stuff, as the saying goes, but he has.

Watergate - an operatic Shakespearean tragicomedy, a litany of bungling, incompetence, paranoia, sleazy deception, corruption and abuse of power, was the scandal that didn't need to be (the cover-up was far, far worse than the petty crime itself), an affair that America, struggling to get back on its feet and regain its self-belief after the National shock of the Kennedy assassination and tragedy of Vietnam, just didn't need.

Mallon's fictionalization of the true events has the gritty, edgy prose of James Ellroy and the staccato-like, sharp & witty dialogue of Tom Wolfe. We all know how this one ends, but it is thrilling nonetheless.

An advice to fellow readers - whilst the main characters of President Nixon, Haldeman, Dean & Mitchell are well-known if faded household names, the novel is actually mainly constructed through the eyes of several lesser-known players, so your enjoyment and appreciation of the book will be enhanced if you WikiPedia at least Rose Woods, Nixon's secretary and she of the infamously erased 18 minutes of Oval Office tape recording, covert operatives and go-between's Fred LaRue and E Howard Hunt, as well as Elliot Richardson, the martyred and vainly ambitious Attorney General and veteran public servant, before commencing reading.

But the character who ultimately steals the show is Richard Nixon, along with his tormented wife Pat. President Nixon - brilliant but flawed, makes the perfect Shakespearean tragic figure strutting the stage that is the Oval Office. Nixon is Self-pitying, paranoid, devious, Machiavellian. Not alone in the White House by any means among a sea of advisers, special counsellors and lawyers, but ultimately lonely. America and Nixon's tragedy was what could have been one of the great Presidencies was destroyed by the dark side of his own brilliance, allowing himself through misjudgment and paranoia to be sucked into the mire by the misdeeds and missteps of those he trusted.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting novelized look at Watergate. Many points of view here, not just major figures like President and Pat Nixon, Howard Hunt and Rose Woods, but others such as the lesser known Fred LaRue and the oldest Republican of them all, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Viewed through all those lenses it makes for a fresh look on Watergate.

Mallon sympathetically portrays figures routinely villainized today, more fodder for the never ending culture wars (that the "Great Uniter" is making worse than ever today). Nixon was a good president, a great foreign policy president, but the enemy was just waiting for an excuse. A truly third rate burglary, portrayed even more emptily and pointless in this novel.

I wanted to give this 5 stars but some of the fictional (?) characters weighed things down in the second half. There are a couple of interesting twists towards the end, but the plot sagged just as the Watergate story has faded from memory for many.

[Ilya · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty fantastic. I don't know enough watergate history, and this book doesn't give the blow-by-blow, but rather tries to find some emotional truth in the humanoids, both highly-placed, and a few mostly-forgotten, who were a part of it. Will some reviewers be upset that the reader is encouraged to feel some sympathy for Nixon? Did Pat Nixon really have a sweet affair with a widower while she was in the White House? You have the sense reading every efficient, precise sentence that Mallon is vastly smarter than you. I shudder to think how much research must have gone into the thing.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bleh. I picked this because I was interested in learning about Watergate while enjoying a novel . The author seemed to assume you knew all about Watergate and it's players, and the talk just felt like some good ol boys blah-blah. I did like learning a little about Pat Nixon and his secretary, Rosemary Woods. But others were nearly left out--Chuck Colson among them. I thought it wasn't well written, and I was amazed that a story as ripe for interest was made gouge-my-eyes-out boring.

[Vicki Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book on Chirp which influenced the reason I gave this a higher rating. The reader did a great Richard Nixon as well as being able to differentiate his voice enough for all of the many characters. Keep in mind this book is historical fiction, so aspects of the story must be taken with a grain of salt. With that understanding, however, listening to how Watergate played out was very entertaining!

[Mary Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is for those of us who continue to be fascinated by Watergate and the downfall of a president. Though a novel, most of the characters are real and there's a HUGE cast of characters to help us keep them straight. Alice Roosevelt Longworth is a hoot, and Pat Nixon is the woman I could always feel for. As for Hunt, Liddy and Macgruder....I finally got them all straight.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: with all the records available, it falls to a novelist to bring together the disparate pieces of Watergate and develop the full picture.

[Fred Forbes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I followed the Watergate mess fairly closely so this was a great trip "back in time". The story and characters rang true and the ability to move the story along and keep it interesting was paramount. I enjoyed this enough that I will be searching out some more Mallon tales. Great ability to fill in the blanks with some very plausible details.

[Geoff Wooldridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Watergate scandal of the 1970s, which ultimately led to the downfall and disgrace of President Richard Milhaus Nixon is a well known and endlessly documented event in American and world political history.

It has become so iconic that, even some 50 years later, political scandals are often given a silly identifier that includes the suffix "gate".

The whole affair has been well documented by numerous journalists and scholars, and the basic facts and key characters are well known by those interested in politics and public affairs.

So, exactly what Thomas Mallon hoped to add to the story by writing a novel in 2013, a blend of fact and fiction, genuinely escapes me.

From my perspective, his novel Watergate added nothing worthwhile to the record of these shameful events, including the cover-up that ensued.

Perhaps it was intended to 'humanise' some of the characters, those close to the President, his inner circle, that either conspired in the original burglary or the complex and corrupt cover-up.

If that is the case, in my opinion, he has achieved, at best, only limited success.

In fact, for a novel, there were too many characters, rammed at readers in shotgun fashion, and although many of the names are familiar, it was all a bit too much and too muddled.

The various fictional conversations and interactions that took place between the players in this 'novel' were mostly banal and inconsequential, and did little by way of providing insight or motivation for the blind loyalty many showed to Nixon or the substantive rationale for being prepared to engage in criminal activities.

If you really want to know about Watergate, there are plenty of scholarly books about it that will provide a much better understanding of events than this novel whose genesis seems peculiar and pointless.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am still fascinated with Watergate, and it felt eerie reading this during our current round of indictments. Mallon, in workmanlike prose, has fashioned a very good spy novel out of the complex business of political dirty tricks all the president's men concocted in the early 1970s. The author is a Republican so the novel, partly, is an attempt to humanize Richard Nixon. It doesn't really work. Nixon remains elusive and his worst traits are not to be found here. There are better portraits, in terms of wholeness and sympathy, of Pat Nixon and Rosemary Woods. All in all, a good novel, even if it should have been shorter.

[Kifflie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Watergate affair certainly had enough interesting characters in it (particularly Alice Longworth, Martha Mitchell and Howard Hunt) for a novel. And this was a pretty decent attempt at it. I did find the writing style just a little too dry and flat. And I'm dubious about the idea of Pat Nixon having a man on the side. Still, the Fred LaRue/Clarine angle was pretty interesting, and the Howard Hunt sections were fascinating and rather creepy at the same time. Nixon has always been somewhat of a tragic figure to me, and he also comes across that way here. I'd only recommend this book if you already have an interest in Watergate and a bit of patience.

[April Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get through this book because it requires long stretches of time to devote to keeping all the characters and timeline moving along, but I really enjoyed the fictionalized telling of the Watergate saga. Definite a recommendation for political nerds like myself.

[Stuart Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

How much of this is true? I don't know. I wish I was smart enough to tell you. It was a great read.

[John Bond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, entertaining, breezy. I am going to read all three in the series now. Gore Vidal would approve. Highly recommend.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer takes an interesting approach in this historical novel. He assumes that the reader has a knowledge of the Watergate affair, as this book is not a straight-forward retelling of the facts. Instead it focuses on the impact the affair had on various protagonists, offering some interesting twists to the original story along the way.

[Lynne Perednia · Rating 4 out of 5]

How one perceives Thomas Mallon's latest work of historical fiction could well depend not so much on the merits of the work itself, but what one brings to it. Much of this novel may not make sense if one didn't live through 1972-73, when a third-rate burglary either took down a presidency or revealed a cancer on the honor of the nation.

For those of us who were amazed at the events and people of those times as they unfolded, Watergate (and Vietnam) remain definitive. For anyone to take on the whole scope of Watergate -- the burglars, the politicians, CRP (or CREEP, or Committe to Re-Elect the President), Woodward and Bernstein, Mrs. Nixon and the girls, and, at the dark center of it all, Richard Milhous Nixon, the drinking and cussing Quaker who carpet bombed Vietnam during peace talks -- how could all that fit into one novel? And be readable?

Mallon has found a way to make it work by focusing on several characters. But they are not all the usual ones. There is as much from the viewpoint of Alice Roosevelt Longworth as there is from both Nixons. Unexpectedly, the central character to the whole story, the one who can put all the pieces together, is Fred LaRue. Mallon says LaRue's life is the one most tampered with. The results are the stuff of which conjecture is used to make sense of events.

The same can be said for Rose Mary Woods and the infamous erasure of 18 1/2 minutes of Oval Office tapes. Mallon comes up with a way that it could have happened that fits perfectly with one way to look at Woods's character and also plays into the way so many people were ready to believe the worst of Nixon and his inner circle. This storyline also makes Woods a woman of her time, so there is trope of women's liberation and how some women who didn't believe in it limited themselves. Pat Nixon is treated with dignity and has an even sadder storyline than the tragedy of being married to Nixon.

The acts of both LaRue and Woods, and reactions to their acts, are used by Mallon to create not a tragedy, but a farce. This is how a presidency self-destructs? Are you kidding? Well, no. And that's why using Alice Roosevelt as a character also makes great sense. This woman of one liners who says late in the novel that someone should have seen that the great promise she had was wasted demonstrates both sides of the coin for both Nixon and his presidency. There is tawdry pettiness and there is the dark desire to not be overshadowed hanging over the characters of this novel and the real Watergate scandal as clearly as any storm cloud that blocks the sun.

Both Woods and LaRue are moved late in the book to read about themselves in books written by others in the scandal's aftermath. Both are crushed by what they read. Both see injustice done to them.

If the novel was adapted into a movie, it would have to pay homage to the TV program Mad Men. That's because the novel is practically an homage to the end of that era, and not just because of all the hard liquor and distaste expressed by so many characters about how the times are changing. The female characters are remarkable portraits of intelligent, ambitious and loving people trapped by their societal roles. Those who try to break the mold are either punished or, at the least, don't win.

This is where the farce Mallon has constructed shows its sturdy underpinnings in tragedy. What if Pat Nixon had had a chance to be happy? What if Rose Mary Woods had not been put down by an ad executive? What if Alice Roosevelt Longworth had forged a life with the man she really loved? How fulfilling would their lives have been? How might history have been different? And how might the men in their lives have messed it all up any way? That's only one way to look at not only Mallon's novel, but also the real people portrayed in it.

And that, regardless of where one stands on Watergate and its aftermath, makes this a novel worth reading, its characters worth caring about and its events worth pondering.

[Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather at a loss about what to say. While I found this novel easily, almost compulsively, readable, I wonder what it has to say. I am someone who lived through the Watergate scandal, someone who was even obsessed by it at the time, so all the names and events within this book (with one or two exceptions) I knew, could picture, and had an already-formed opinion on (which may not be the case with other readers).

The novel makes a limp attempt to explain how the greatest constitutional crisis of the 20th century came about, but the explanation is pure invention, and while great historic events sometimes get triggered by piddly little events, one does wonder if the mess that was Watergate really could've been generated by something so minor as a misunderstanding of someone's name--absent a culture of paranoia, underhandedness, and disdain for law and people. And that is what is not within these pages--an exploration of the psychology of the major players that would allow a "third-rate burglary" to happen and to bring down a president.

The writing is deft, the implacable timeline and enormous cast of characters well handled, but in the end, I think for people not as familiar with the whole mess as I am that they will have more questions than answers after reading, and will wonder what happened--not why it happened, but what exactly was the country so up-ended about. The role of fiction is to illumine the human condition. To me, this novel muddies the waters instead.

Furthermore (warning: political rant to follow), Mallon seems to follow the Nixon-engineered theory that Nixon was a great foreign policy president brought low by his baser instincts domestically. If one examines the Nixonian record objectively, that theory is weak and untrue. This was a man who all but committed treason in the days leading up to his first election by talking the South Vietnamese government out of a peace deal engineered by LBJ two weeks before the 1968 election. This was a man who ran on a platform that he had a "secret plan" to end the war ... which he didn't till five years and thousands of lives later, and even then, the fall of Saigon was inevitable, while in the meantime, Cambodia was so thoroughly destabilized that Pol Pot and his genocide should be laid at Nixon's feet. China...that was at least as much Xo En Lai as Nixon. And... well, I won't go on.

It's fun to read, but if you're looking for enlightenment or a grasp on the people involved, you won't find it here.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the way through this wonderful book, I kept trying to imagine whether someone who was too young for Watergate would enjoy it as much as I did, because much of the fun was getting an inside view of so many of the characters from Watergate, many of whom I'd almost forgotten: preppy Jeb Magruder, CIA loyalist Jim McCord, House Speaker Carl Albert, secretary of everything Elliot Richardson, and on and on.

Mallon also introduces certain characters and storylines that bring fresh life to some of the oldest parts of the story. Why did Nixon secretary Rose Mary Woods delete 18 minutes of the Oval Office tapes? He provides one answer. What was going on in Pat Nixon's mind and heart? He provides a much more human view of her than any of the news coverage, and even gives her a romantic life that few would have imagined. And why did the Watergate burglary target the Democratic National Committee offices in the first place? Again, Mallon comes up with a completely quirky, absurd and yet somehow logical answer to that question as well.

Mallon doesn't shy away from inside looks at principals like Nixon, Haldeman, Kissinger and others, but he makes the book sing by focusing intensely on some of the lesser known figures in the drama. He adds a lot of humor and wisdom to the book by making Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy's daughter and a staunch Republican, a regular figure, and he brings the political skullduggery into focus through the unlikely character of Fred LaRue, a Southern gentleman who largely served as a bagman for payoffs to the Watergate burglars after their arrest. There is also a rich and poignant backstory for Watergate operative Howard Hunt, who lost his wife Dorothy in a plane crash. and a semi-sympathetic look at Richardson, who at one point looked like he would be a shoo-in as a GOP presidential candidate, but whose star faded just as the Reagan conservatives were grabbing control of the party.

I'm going to argue that even if you didn't watch the Watergate hearings or study this episode, Mallon's novel of the event will show how it was both an absurd and profound chapter in a particularly tumultuous time in American history.

[Victor Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lived through the Watergate years in my mid-twenties and remember the basic outline of the events. So, I wasn't sure that this fictionalized account of the story would hold my interest. Since the novel is on the New York Times'list of the Notable Books of 2012, however, and I was able to obtain a copy of the Kindle edition for the New York Public Library, I decided to take up the text.

I was pleased with the tone of book, which was neither too harsh on Nixon and his cronies nor too soft. The author, Thomas Mallon, offers a fair assessment of Richard Nixon, both his weaknesses and his strengths, but is less successful in imagining the personalities and motivations of the Watergate conspirators -- Mitchell, Hunt, Magruder, LaRue, and others. It appears that he adds a lot of fictional material to Hunt's story and his interaction with Magruder and LaRue, although he gets the major facts right: the Committee to Re-elect the President paid Hunt substantial amounts to pay for attorneys for himself and some of the Cubans arrested in the Watergate break-ins, and Hunt probably was the person who caused the White House connection to the break-in to become known. LaRue was the conduit between Mitchell, who was raising cash, and Hunt, who was receiving it. That Hunt's wife died in a plane crash at Chicago's Midway Field is also correct. The cause of that crash is not revealed. Hunt's connection, during the cover-up, with LaRue and Magruder, and LaRue's romantic involvement with a high-level staff member of the Democratic National Committee is probably pure fiction, although it moves the narrative along nicely. Other important characters in the novel are real, such as Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice, in her late 80's at the time, but their importance in anything related to Watergate is probably fictional.

In all, the novel ties the various pieces of Watergate together nicely and provides more understanding, from this late historical perspective, than readers are likely to find in one place in other fictional books.