Watergate

As White House counsel to Richard Nixon, a young John W. Dean was one of the primary players in the Watergate scandal—and ultimately became the government’s key witness in the investigations that ended the Nixon presidency. After the scandal subsided, Dean rebuilt his career, first in business and then as a bestselling author and lecturer. But while the events were still fresh in his mind, he wrote this remarkable memoir about the operations of the Nixon White House and the crisis that led to the president’s resignation.

La notte del 17 giugno 1972, a Washington, la polizia sorprese cinque uomini entrati abusivamente nel quartier generale del Comitato nazionale democratico, in un edificio che ospitava il Watergate Hotel. Si era in piena campagna elettorale, e quello fu l’inizio di una storia appassionante che tenne per due anni tutto il mondo col fiato sospeso, fino alle dimissioni del presidente Nixon. Lo scandalo Watergate dimostrò che la “parte sana” del paese poteva anche arrivare a sbarazzarsi della più alta carica del governo, se corrotta e accecata dal potere. Quella vicenda si sedimentò nella coscienza di Kurt Vonnegut e pochi anni dopo gli offrì lo spunto per questo romanzo. Anche qui c’è uno scandalo e un piccolo “uomo senza qualità”, entrato nei ranghi della burocrazia con l’unica ambizione di essere un ingranaggio della macchina dello stato, che ne viene travolto nonostante sia (o forse perché è) l’ultima ruota del carro…

Beginning in 1945, America rocketed through a quarter-century of extraordinary economic growth, experiencing an amazing boom that soared to unimaginable heights in the 1960s. At one point, in the late 1940s, American workers produced 57 percent of the planet's steel, 62 percent of the oil, 80 percent of the automobiles…

Now available in a revised and updated edition, the continuing national bestseller (nearly 200,000 copies sold) about the events, ideas, and personalities of the seven decades since the end of World War I. Originally published in 1983 and named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, this edition contains a new final chapter, and the text has been revised and updated…. Incisive, stimulating and frequently controversial, Modern Times combines fact, anecdote, incident and portrait in a major full-scale analysis of how the modern age came into being and where it is heading.