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Drawn from the Miller Center's First Year project - which seeks to provide a historical framework to guide future presidents and their teams in the crucial first year of a new administration - Crucible addresses core questions of governance facing a new president, from navigating a broken political system to thriving in a changing media environment.

Drawn from the Miller Center's First Year project - which seeks to provide a historical framework to guide future presidents in the crucial first year of a new administration - Crucible addresses core questions of governance facing a new president, from navigating a broken political system to thriving in a changing media environment.

On the first anniversary of Donald Trump's presidency, Michael Nelson published Trump's First Year, a non-partisan assessment of the most unusual years in presidential history. At the midpoint of Trump's term, Nelson has updated his book to include the second year, which if anything has proven to be even more remarkable.

Following the election of Donald Trump, the office of the US president has come under scrutiny like never before. Featuring penetrating insights from high-profile presidential scholars, The Presidency provides the deep historical and constitutional context needed to put the Trump era into its proper perspective.

Following the election of Donald Trump, the office of the US president has come under scrutiny like never before. Featuring penetrating insights from high-profile presidential scholars, The Presidency provides the deep historical and constitutional context needed to put the Trump era into its proper perspective.

In the controversial legacy of the Nixon presidency, the administration's effort to curb and control the spread of the world's weapons of mass destruction is often overlooked. Patrick Garrity and Erin Mahan explore and assess Nixon's record, addressing not only nuclear but also biological and chemical weapons.

In his widely acclaimed Chasing Shadows ("e;the best account yet of Nixon's devious interference with Lyndon Johnson's 1968 Vietnam War negotiations"e;-- Washington Post), Ken Hughes revealed the roots of the covert activity that culminated in Watergate. In Fatal Politics, Hughes turns to the final years of the war and Nixon's reelection bid of 1972 to expose the president's darkest secret.While Nixon publicly promised to keep American troops in Vietnam only until the South Vietnamese could take their place, he privately agreed with his top military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers that Saigon could never survive without American boots on the ground. Afraid that a preelection fall of Saigon would scuttle his chances for a second term, Nixon put his reelection above the lives of American soldiers. Postponing the inevitable, he kept America in the war into the fourth year of his presidency. At the same time, Nixon negotiated a "e;decent interval"e; deal with the Communists to put a face-saving year or two between his final withdrawal and Saigon's collapse. If they waited that long, Nixon secretly assured North Vietnam's chief sponsors in Moscow and Beijing, the North could conquer the South without any fear that the United States would intervene to save it. The humiliating defeat that haunts Americans to this day was built into Nixon's exit strategy. Worse, the myth that Nixon was winning the war before Congress "e;tied his hands"e; has led policy makers to adapt tactics from America's final years in Vietnam to the twenty-first-century conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, prolonging both wars without winning either.Forty years after the fall of Saigon, and drawing on more than a decade spent studying Nixon's secretly recorded Oval Office tapes--the most comprehensive, accurate, and illuminating record of any presidency in history, much of it never transcribed until now-- Fatal Politics tells a story of political manipulation and betrayal that will change how Americans remember Vietnam. Fatal Politics is also available as a special e-book that allows the reader to move seamlessly from the book to transcripts and audio files of these historic conversations.

The break-in at Watergate and the cover-up that followed brought about the resignation of Richard Nixon, creating a political shockwave that reverberates to this day. But as Ken Hughes reveals in his powerful new book, in all the thousands of hours of declassified White House tapes, the president orders a single break-in--and it is not at the Watergate complex. Hughes's examination of this earlier break-in, plans for which the White House ultimately scrapped, provides a shocking new perspective on a long history of illegal activity that prolonged the Vietnam War and was only partly exposed by the Watergate scandal.As a key player in the University of Virginia's Miller Center Presidential Recordings Program, Hughes has spent more than a decade developing and mining the largest extant collection of transcribed tapes from the Johnson and Nixon White Houses. Hughes's unparalleled investigation has allowed him to unearth a pattern of actions by Nixon going back long before 1972, to the final months of the Johnson administration. Hughes identified a clear narrative line that begins during the 1968 campaign, when Nixon, concerned about the impact on his presidential bid of the Paris peace talks with the Vietnamese, secretly undermined the negotiations through a Republican fundraiser named Anna Chennault. Three years after the election, in an atmosphere of paranoia brought on by the explosive appearance of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon feared that his treasonous--and politically damaging--manipulation of the Vietnam talks would be exposed. Hughes shows how this fear led to the creation of the Secret Investigations Unit, the "e;White House Plumbers,"e; and Nixon's initiation of illegal covert operations guided by the Oval Office. Hughes's unrivaled command of the White House tapes has allowed him to build an argument about Nixon that goes far beyond what we think we know about Watergate. Chasing Shadows is also available as a special e-book that links to the massive collection of White House tapes published by the Miller Center through Rotunda, the electronic imprint of the University of Virginia Press. This unique edition allows the reader to move seamlessly from the book to the recordings' expertly rendered transcripts and to listen to audio files of the remarkable--and occasionally shocking--conversations on which this dark chapter in American history would ultimately turn.