The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

by James Rosen

Book Overview

As Nixons attorney general, John Mitchell had been at the center of the controversies of the 1960s. But it was the Watergate scandal that spelled his destruction. The Strong Man traces in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385508646
• ISBN13: 9780385508643
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 609 Pages
• Weight: 2.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The Single Best Watergate Book of All

This is a very smart and incisive book. It is recommended as one of the best Watergate books yet written. NO... IT IS THE BEST. It is carefully and motivationally written. I cannot speak to all the facts of the book. No one could, but I can rely on James Rosen as a good faith journalist - his accounts of the Kent State shootings and other issues I do know about are accurate, aware and alive. I was, for example, a student at Kent State during the ridiculous and tragic events of 1970 and during the late 1960s. My tenure as eye witness to history and as a student of politics and human behavior spanned the entire pregnant period from 1966 to 1973 when the Second, Failed or Red American Revolution came and went. Rosen has a keen, circumspect and balanced understanding of the events that shows he is not biased in either his view of history or his world view. His approach is scientific and he is a slave to his facts not to his ideology - whatever it may be. In the instance of his views on the Second or Red Revolution in the USA, he established his bona fides with me. I have confidence that the rest of his reporting and thinking is similarly well founded. If a journalist follows his facts to the bloody end like James Rosen, he can only be celebrated. I am still reading and evaluating the book, so I am going to keep adding to and revising this review as I go along. I will come back later and mop up and synthesize my thinking. I see no harm whatever in a provisional review. THE BOOK IS GREAT -- very eye opening. More to follow.

Review by one of Mitchell's lawyers

The author, James Rosen, has written a painstaking reproduction of the events that occurred during the Watergate hearings and trial. This book is a meticulous and detailed recitation that Mr. Rosen has set forth in this very well-written book. Mr. Mitchell is deserving of criticism for his role in Watergate and suffered the consequences of a conviction for his activities. The book is not a proclamation of Mr. Mitchell's innocence, but an exposition of his role and raises questions of the complicity of others who were also convicted. Having served as one of Mr. Mitchell's defense counsel, I found the book to be an accurate recitation of the events of the Watergate affair.

Breathtaking!

Rosen hits the mark. He avoids the threat of getting bogged down in details and boring the reader, but writes the reader into the book. Rosen's book is a must read if not to experience elegant writing, then to be a part of the chronicling of our time.

Gripping

The scenes where young Marty watches her psychotic, alcoholic mom self-destruct were devastating. I usually don't read nonfiction, but this has the cinematic flow that I associate with great novels. And it's pretty funny considering how heavy the material is.

Excellent political biography!

This is a very well-written book, scrupulously researched, and challenging in its conclusions. The Strong Man should change our understanding of the Watergate scandal.