Five Months That Changed America
From award-winning journalist and author John A. Jenkins comes a revolutionary exploration of the summer before Watergate—a parallel world of a half-century ago when America faced events and crises strikingly similar to those of today—told through the lives and words of those who lived it.
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About the Book
Inflation rages. Crime is rising. Abortion rights take center stage at the Supreme Court. China poses an existential threat. Black lives are under attack. The president battles the press as he seeks to subvert not just the political order but the rule of law itself.
This is the Summer of ’71 — a pivotal, operatic season of hope and despair, missed opportunities and era-changing decisions.
More than a half-century later, the importance of events that defined the American experience during that fateful five-month period spanning May to September 1971 is difficult to overstate. Summer of ’71 brings it all to the page through first-person accounts only now becoming available: the papers, diaries, and oral histories of key players.
Award-winning journalist John A. Jenkins witnessed many of the events himself, and draws on Nixon’s White House tapes and a multitude of sources to tell the story of that time as no one else could.
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Get a behind-the-scenes look at Summer of ’71 with this exclusive excerpt, featuring the Introduction, A Note to Readers, Acknowledgments, Sources, and Photographic Credits.
John A. Jenkins takes you inside his research process — from the Library of Congress archives to Nixon’s White House tapes — and introduces the key figures whose lives define this pivotal summer.
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A three-minute clip from Summer of ’71, read by the narrator