On Nixon's Madness: An Emotional History

Zachary Jonathan Jacobson's book "On Nixon's Madness" examines President Richard Nixon's use of the "madman theory" in foreign relations, combining biography and intellectual and cultural history to understand his emotional life and how he struggled between feeling and inhibition.

Format: Hardback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 28 March 2023
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

When Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he was well aware that if he won, he would have to figure out a way to get the United States out of the disastrous Vietnam War. It was during the summer on a beach that Nixon confided in his top aide, H. R. Haldeman, about one of his most infamous and risky strategies: the madman theory.

In On Nixon's Madness, Zachary Jonathan Jacobson delves into the enigmatic president through this theory of Nixon's own invention. Nixon used strategic force and nuclear bluffing to coerce his foreign adversaries through sheer unpredictability. As his national security advisor Henry Kissinger noted, Nixon's strategy resembled a poker game in which he pushed so many chips into the pot that his United States foes would think the president had gone crazy.

From Vietnam to Pakistan and India to the greater Middle East, Nixon applied this madman theory. Foreign relations were not a steady march toward peaceful coexistence but rather an ongoing test of mettle. Nixon saw the Cold War as he saw his life, as a series of ordeals that demanded great risk and grand gestures. For decades, journalists, critics, and scholars have searched for the real Nixon behind these acts. Was he a Red-baiter, a worldly statesman, a war criminal, or, in the end, a punchline?

Jacobson combines biography, intellectual and cultural history to understand the emotional life of Richard Nixon, exploring how the former president struggled between great effusions of feeling and great inhibition, how he winced at the notion of his reputation for rage, and how he used that ill repute to his advantage.

Weight: 752g
Dimension: 162 x 237 x 37 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781421445533