Dear Great Book Guru,  I am looking forward to Friday night’s Chill Out event here in Sea Cliff- great music, restaurants, and shops- sounds like the perfect event!  I will have time for some serious reading, and with  the elections just over, I feel inspired to tackle a good political biography.  Any ideas? Chilling Out in Sea Cliff

Dear Chilling Out,  I recently read a fascinating biography: ONE MAN AGAINST THE WORLD –The Tragedy of Richard Nixon- by Tim Weiner.  Weiner has written award winning histories of the FBI and the CIA, and this is another well documented, well written story of paranoia, deception, and loyalty gone awry.  Using recently declassified information, Weiner paints a portrait of a man riddled with insecurities and abated by a cadre of sycophants who undermined our country in a myriad of ways.  The sabotaging of peace talks to defame Lyndon Johnson and prevent Hubert Humphrey’s election, the bombing of civilians in Hanoi, the attacks on neutral Cambodia, the sale of ambassadorships, and his original  claims that the CIA had masterminded the Watergate break-ins are all described in compelling detail and substantiated by oral recordings from the State Department, journalists, memoirists, and-  most damningly- Nixon himself.   For many, Nixon is seen as a complicated, tragic figure whose greatest crime was the botched Watergate break-in.  Weiner refutes this by showing us a man whose crimes were far, far worse than imagined. The lives ruined, the lives lost, the lasting damage to our democracy are presented here, and the lasting tragedy as it turns out  is not Nixon’s, but ours.