31 Days
Chapter One
DAY 1
Friday, August 9, 1974
"Then you destroy yourself . . ."
On his last morning in power, President Richard Nixon arose in the predawn darkness after just a few hours of sleep. He ordered his favorite breakfast of poached eggs and corned-beef hash served to him, alone, in the Lincoln sitting room, the same room where twenty-two months earlier he had retreated by himself to watch on TV as he and Vice President Spiro Agnew were reelected in one of the greatest landslides in American history. The most inward, solitary, and reclusive of presidents-who paradoxically was determined to ensure that every word he spoke, and that was spoken to him, was recorded for history-Nixon to a rare degree determined exactly what he hoped to do and say in public beforehand, by himself, by filling yellow legal pads with notes, arguments, talking points, and exhortations to himself. In a few hours h ... read full excerpt from 31 Days ebook
