Perlstein Brings “Nixonland” to Nixon Library

Author Rick Perlstein will discuss history of the Nixon era

September 24 at 7:30 p.m.

June 9, Yorba Linda, CA—The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, a nonpartisan federal institution, announced today that journalist and historian Rick Perlstein will discuss his new New York Times bestselling book Nixonland at the Nixon Library’s Yorba Linda, California, location on September 24 at 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public, who may call (714) 983 9120 for reservations. More information is available on the Nixon Library’s Web site at www.nixonlibrary.gov.
Nixonland, a history of the United States during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s, chronicles the political controversies and movements of those times and how they affected Richard Nixon’s political career—and how President Nixon’s career, in turn, changed American history. Perlstein’s book was the subject of a cover story in the New York Times Book Review, in which George F. Will said that “Perlstein’s sprawling, rollicking book” was a “compulsively readable chronicle” of U.S. history.

"This is a terrific read. What a delight it is to discover the new generation of historians like Rick Perlstein not only getting history correct but giving us all fresh insights and understanding of it."
—John W. Dean, Nixon's White House counsel

“Rick Perlstein's Nixonland digs deep into a decisive period of our history and brings back a past that is all the scarier for its intense humanity. With a firm grasp on the larger meaning of countless events and personalities, many of them long forgotten, Perlstein superbly shows how paranoia and innuendo flowed into the mainstream of American politics after 1968, creating divisive passions that have survived for decades."
—Sean Wilentz Princeton University, author of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

            Perlstein, a senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, is a former columnist for The New Republic Online and political correspondent for The Village Voice. His 2001 book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus won the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
 “Part of the Nixon Library’s mission is to encourage a free spirit of inquiry into all aspects of the Nixon administration and American history,” Library director Tim Naftali said. “Inviting Rick Perlstein continues our tradition of bringing serious and diverse points of view about the Nixon administration and American history to Orange County.”
Pervious speakers at the Library include journalist Carl Bernstein of the Woodward and Bernstein investigative team, former deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus (who resigned during the “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973), Ed Gray (who co-wrote the posthumously published memoirs of his father, former FBI director L. Patrick Gray III) and Egil “Bud” Krogh, head of the so-called “Plumbers” unit. Fox News correspondent James Rosen and Nixon administration veteran Geoffrey Shepard will appear at the Library later this month.

About the Nixon Library: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, a nonpartisan federal institution, is a part of the National Archives and Records Administration. For more information, contact (714) 983-9120 or visit http://www.nixonlibrary.gov.

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