Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Even his telling of the couple's lengthy courtship feels fresh, as the ambitious but socially awkward young Quaker lawyer trapped in the small California town of his upbringing pursues the self-possessed, physically gorgeous, much-sought-after young teacher who grew up with almost no advantages. Swift delves into their compatibility ups and downs, their parenting skills and other private matters, but he focuses mostly on the difficult decisions Pat and Dick had to make together before undertaking seemingly long-shot attempts to serve in the House of Representatives, Senate and the White House.Ī model of well-documented revisionist history. From the opening chapters, it is obvious that Swift understands the skillful use of details and anecdotes that have escaped a large number of Nixon biographers. The author’s evidence is plentiful, and he writes with grace throughout the mostly chronological narrative. Perhaps the most surprising conclusion by Swift is that Pat demonstrated sympathy for women's rights not only in the United States, but around the globe.

It is a nuanced portrait of each as an individual and of them as a married couple, working through good and bad times while being scrutinized intensively by political foes, ideologues, academics and journalist gossipmongers. The book is certainly no valentine to the Pat and Dick of the title, however. He uses them wisely, smashing stereotypes of Richard Nixon as a cold personality who had no clue how to treat his wife and of Pat Nixon as a plastic female too old-fashioned in her idea of marriage to make an impact as a political wife. The author had access to letters and other of the first lady’s materials unavailable to previous biographers and historians. The marriage of Richard and Pat Nixon undergoes sharp analysis by Swift, a formally trained psychologist and first-family historian ( The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm: A Thousand Days in London, 1938-1940, 2008, etc.).

Pat and Dick by Will Swift