Years of Upheaval.

KISSINGER, Henry.

Item Number: 124894

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982.

First edition of Kissinger’s candid account of the turbulent years of the second Administration of Richard Nixon, detailing the Watergate scandal and the 1973 October war in the Middle East. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated with photographs and maps. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “To Bill Safire, My sometimes uninvited and permanent gadfly. From his friend, Henry A. Kissinger.” The recipient, William Safire, was an important American author, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign in the 1960 Presidential race, and again in 1968. Following Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a presidential speechwriter for both Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. He was a frequent guest on Meet The Press, describing himself as the voice of “libertarian conservatives” and authored several political columns, most notably his weekly column “On Language” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death in 2009. He authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. Author photograph by Bern Schwartz. A fine association.

A dramatic day-to-day account of President Nixon’s tumultuous second term, from the optimism of the Paris Agreement of January 1973 to his dramatic resignation a year-and-a-half later, “this memoir is a description of how the issues appeared to one of the participants shaping the decisions” (Foreword).