The Alma and Joseph Gildenhorn Book Series features Evan Thomas, New York Times bestselling author, discussing his new book "Being Nixon: A Man Divided."

This conversation was recorded at the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC on Tuesday, September 29, 2015.

About "Being Nixon":
In "Being Nixon," Evan Thomas peels away the layers of the complex, confounding figure who became America's 37th president. The son of devout Quakers, Richard Nixon (not unlike his rival John F. Kennedy) grew up in the shadow of an older, favored brother and thrived on conflict and opposition. Through high school and college, in the navy and in politics, he was constantly leading crusades and fighting off enemies real and imagined. As maudlin as he was Machiavellian, Nixon possessed the plainspoken eloquence to reduce American television audiences to tears with his careersaving "Checkers" speech; meanwhile, his darker half hatched schemes designed to take down his political foes, earning him the notorious nickname "Tricky Dick."

Drawing on a wide range of historical accounts, Thomas reveals the contradictions of a leader whose vision and foresight led him to achieve detente with the Soviet Union and reestablish relations with communist China, but whose underhanded political tactics tainted his reputation long before the Watergate scandal. One of the principal architects of the modern Republican Party and its "silent majority" of disaffected whites and conservative exDixiecrats, Nixon was also deemed a liberal in some quarters for his efforts to desegregate Southern schools, create the Environmental Protection Agency, and end the draft.

A deeply insightful character study as well as a brilliant political biography, "Being Nixon" offers a surprising look at a man capable of great bravery and extraordinary deviousnessa balanced portrait of a president too often reduced to caricature.