Share
Fr. 35.50
Ben Stein
THE PEACEMAKER - Nixon: The Man, President, and My Friend
English · Hardback
Will be released 24.10.2023
Description
"Stein presents Nixon as not just a politician and president--in triumph and disgrace, gaining, wielding and losing power--but as a human being, a down-to-earth family man and friend to Ben Stein and his family. Stein presents an argument that Nixon was not only one of the most capable presidents the United States has ever seen, but one who was focused on and manifestly successful in his self-described role as peacemaker in the world. And on the journey of getting to know real Nixon, Stein reveals the real Ben Stein: his parents, upbringing, and comin gof age in the 50's and 60's, his work in the White House, and eventual move to California and evolution as a writer"--
List of contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS to THE PEACEMAKER: Nixon: The Man, President, and My Friend by Ben Stein
Foreword: Ben Stein and Richard Nixon: History’s Oddest Couple by Aram Bakshian Jr. xi
Prologue by John R. Coyne Jr. xv
Introduction: Blessed Are the Peacemakers 1
Chapter One: An Ordinary, Solid Citizen American: My First “Meeting” with Nixon 7
Chapter Two: America in the 1950s: A Non boring Decade of Peace, Progress, and Prosperity . . .but We Were Scared 17
Chapter Three: The Real Nixon: He Could Get Things Done, and He Did Not Stop Working until Things Got Done 41
Chapter Four: The Man inside the Nixon Mask 57
Chapter Five: California Part 1:A Big Change in My Life 75
Chapter Six: Plenty to Fear: Media Lynch Mob and the Man Who Saved the Children of Israel 83
Chapter Seven: Lawyer, Politician, Performer 119
Chapter Eight: Guilty First, Trial Second: It Matters a Lot Who Your Lawyer Is 127
Chapter Nine: Au Revoir: A Media Coup d’Etat and the Worst Day Ever in American History 145
Chapter Ten: California Part 2: A Dream Job 163
Chapter Eleven: A Memorable Birthday Party at the Western White House 177
Chapter Twelve: In Charge of Freedom Itself 189
Chapter Thirteen: A Shonda—a Disgrace 203
Chapter Fourteen: The Most Capable People on Earth 213
Chapter Fifteen: An Ordinary Man Wearing a Nixon Mask 221
Epilogue 225
Index 229
About the Author 237
About the author
Ben Stein is the most famous economics teacher in America. His comedic role as the droning economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is by far the most widely viewed scene of economics teaching in economics history and has been ranked as one of the fifty most famous scenes in movie history. But in real life, Ben Stein is a powerful thinkers on economics, politics, education and history and motivation – and like his father, Herbert Stein, considered one of the great humorists on political economy and how life works in this nation.
Stein in real life has a bachelor's with honors in economics from Columbia, studied economics at the graduate level at Yale, is a graduate of Yale Law School ( valedictorian of his class by election of his classmates in 1970), and has as diverse a resume as any man in America.
His background includes...poverty lawyer for poor people in New Haven, trade regulation lawyer for the FTC, speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford, columnist and editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, columnist for The New York Times, teacher about law and economics at UC, Santa Cruz and Pepperdine. Stein was the 2009 winner of the Malcolm Forbes Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism. Stein was the co-host, along with Jimmy Kimmel, of the pathbreaking Comedy Central game show, Win Ben Stein's Money, which won seven Emmys, including ones for Ben and Jimmy for best game show host(s); surely making him the only well-known economist to win an Emmy. Presently, he writes a column for The American Spectator and NewsMax, and is a regular commentator on Fox News, CNN, Newsmax TV and on CBS Sunday Morning. Stein has written or co-written roughly 30 books, mostly about investing, many of them New York Times bestsellers, including: The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich and The World According to Ben Stein: Wit, Wisdom & Even More Wit. He lives and works in the Los Angeles metro area.
https://www.mrbenstein.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheWorldAccordingToBenStein/featured
https://www.newsmax.com/insiders/benstein/bio-39/
Summary
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” – Matthew 5:9
“I don’t think any president has been more wrongly persecuted than Nixon, ever. I just think he was a saint.” – Ben Stein
From Ben Stein, New York Times bestselling author, humorist and former speech writer for both Nixon and Ford administrations – a powerful (and humorous) thinker on economics, politics, education and history and motivation – a personal memoir of his friend Richard Nixon: The man, patriot, president, peacemaker and visionary.
The Richard Nixon Stein remembers and lovingly describes has almost nothing to do with the Richard Nixon as portrayed in most media. In Stein’s view, Richard Nixon was a born peacemaker, a saint. Stein believes Nixon was tortured, abused, beat up by the Beautiful People, but through it all, above all, he was a peacemaker, a trait he inherited from his Quaker mother.
Nixon’s goal, as he often explained to Stein and others on his staff, was to create “a generation of peace.” And Stein argues he did it; Nixon gave the United States the longest sustained period of peace since World War II. In Stein’s view, if we no longer have to fear Russian ICBMs screaming out of hell to start nuclear war, we can thank the shade of Richard Nixon.
Why did the media hate him so much? Stein argues it was because Nixon was vulnerable and showed it when attacked. He did not have the tough hide of a Reagan or an Obama. Like the schoolyard bullies they are, the media went after Nixon for his vulnerability.
An insider’s account of Nixon the man, president and peacemaker, The Peacemaker: Nixon: The Man, President and My Friend will make you reconsider the life and legacy of 37th President of the United States.
Foreword
PROLOGUE to THE PEACEMAKER: Nixon: The Man, President and My Friend by Ben Stein
Up until the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, Ben Stein, Aram Bakshian, and I shared a suite of offices in the Old Executive Office Building (EOB) as members of the president’s personal writing staff. We became fast friends and remain so today.
Aram, a brilliant writer with wide-ranging interests and deep Washington experience, would go on to serve as Ronald Reagan’s director of speech writing and continued to publish articles and reviews in numerous publications until his death in2022. I had come to the Nixon staff from the National Review by way of the Office of the Vice President, where I served as Vice President Spiro T. Agnew’s chief speechwriter until his resignation. After a tour with President Gerald Ford and some freelance work, I went to work as chief writer for the CEO of Amoco, now BP.
Ben, the third member of our triumvirate, came to the Nixon writing operation from Yale Law School (YLS) after a few dreary stops in the federal bureaucracy. There were some initial doubts about Ben’s qualifications, chiefly because he came as the son of the president’s chief economic adviser, the brilliant economist Herbert Stein.
But those doubts were quickly dispelled as Ben threw him-self into his work. He was totally dedicated to the president, whom they called the peacemaker and for whom he produced, among numerous assigned pieces of presidential prose, the draft of a national energy plan, something that hasn’t been done since, and the draft of a coherent health care plan, which, had it been enacted, would have significantly altered the terms of the national debate.
In all, Ben, who because of his unwavering loyalty had become a special favorite of the Nixon family, played an indispensable role in articulating the goals and aspirations of the Nixon administration—an administration of solid accomplishment led by an extraordinary president. The accomplishments were historic—an honorable end to the war in Vietnam; the opening to China, which altered the international balance of power; and a strong and principled defense of Israel, which set the pattern for succeeding administrations. And though he’d lament its takeover by extremists, he can take credit for establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, thus becoming the first—and perhaps the only—green president.
Through Watergate and the years beyond, Ben remained fiercely loyal, defending President Nixon in the media and visiting him frequently for extended conversations on state craft and politics, uniquely qualifying him to write the book on the real Richard Nixon.
Ben would go on to become a regular contributor on business, politics, government, finance, and the arts for a variety of publications, among them Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, and The American Spectator; would make regular appearances on network news and discussion programs; and would host his own TV show, Win Ben Stein’s Money. His early days in Hollywood were chronicled in his contemporary classic, Dreemz. He is also widely remembered as the droning economics professor in the classic film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Ben is also known as the author of a series of books aimed at younger readers, talking about investing in a common-sensical way. As Warren Buffett, the most astute and widely admired investor of our times, said of The Capitalist Code(Humanix Books, 2017), one of Ben’s books, “My friend, Ben Stein, has written a short book that tells you everything about investing. . . . Follow that advice and you will do better than almost all investors."
Writer, economist, pundit, entertainer, friend—Ben Stein is a man of many parts, all of them admirable. But perhaps most admirable is his undying loyalty to one of the most unjustly maligned presidents in American history—a president of great accomplishment who was betrayed, sold out, and railroaded into resigning his presidency.
Ben Stein’s deeply felt and evocative Peacemaker, written with passion and conviction, represents a significant step in redeeming the reputation of one of our great presidents, Richard M. Nixon.
John R. Coyne Jr
Product details
Customer reviews
No reviews have been written for this item yet. Write the first review and be helpful to other users when they decide on a purchase.
Write a review
Thumbs up or thumbs down? Write your own review.