This is the autobiography of Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Before him only six men who held the office wrote comprehensive memoirs. Now, here is Richard Nixon's self-portrait: a major work of autobiography, an extraordinary historical document, an intensely personal memoir. Richard Nixon begins his story with his earliest recollections of a rural California boyhood and continues through the moment he and his family left the White House for the last time. Within that journey, we see the struggle of a man to implement what he believed. Richard Nixon's is the story of a life of conflict and contrasts, of supreme happiness and anguished sorrow. It is the story of a political man, a man who lives and fights in the arena of American politics, winning great victories and suffering shattering defeats. Above all, it is the story of a man who chose to lead his life in public, but who remained a private person. Even his closest associates have contended that they never came to know the real Nixon. Throughout his public career Richard Nixon madeextensive notes about his ideas, conversations, activities, meetings. During his presidency, from November 1971 until April 19738 and again in June and July 1974, he kept an almost daily diary of reflections, analyses, and perceptions. These notes and diary dictations, quoted throughout this book, provide a unique insight into the complexities of the modern presidency and the great issues of American policy and politics. Never before have we been able to share with such immediacy in the thoughts and feelings of a working President. Without question, this book will be a basic source for historians and scholars. It is likely to engender as much debate and discussion as did the author himself throughout his public life. Here is the opportunity to see and to judge the kind of man Richard Nixon perceives himself to be; here he candidly analyzes his strengths and his weaknesses, his doubts and strong beliefs, his successes and failures, his good —and his bad—decisions. What kind of man was the first president to resign the office: why did he do what he did? These are the things we want to know from the man himself; these are the things Richard Nixon now tells us.