9780525498230
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Playing with Fire audiobook

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Playing with Fire Audiobook Summary

From the host of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, an important and enthralling new account of the presidential election that changed everything, the race that created American politics as we know it today

The 1968 U.S. Presidential election was the young Lawrence O’Donnell’s political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations.  For years he has deployed one of America’s shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself, but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different, and how we got to where we are now. Playing With Fire represents O’Donnell’s master class in American electioneering, embedded in the epic human drama of a system, and a country, coming apart at the seams in real time.

Nothing went according to the script. LBJ was confident he’d dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson’s greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren’t prepared to challenge their own party’s incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring to run against the president and the Vietnam War. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, LBJ dropped out, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage.

Suddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth façade behind which he feverishly held his party’s right and left wings in the fold, through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace.  But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason.  The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today.

Playing With Fire is the perfect holiday gift!

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Playing with Fire Audiobook Narrator

Lawrence O'Donnell is the narrator of Playing with Fire audiobook that was written by Lawrence O’Donnell

About the Author(s) of Playing with Fire

Lawrence O’Donnell is the author of Playing with Fire

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Subjects

The publisher of the Playing with Fire is Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. includes the following subjects: political books, gifts for dad, gifts for men, best history books, Nixon, Kennedy, RFK, LBJ, Watergate, Kissinger, 1968, modern politics, presidential history, Conservatism, Fox News, Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, 1968 Democratic National Convention, Lyndon B. Johnson, White House, Donald Trump, Trump, playing with fire, best gifts for dads, history, history books, history books for adults, book for men best sellers, presidents, american history, biography, political science, us history, government, president, biographies, Political Science, Political Process, Elections, History, United States, 20th Century, Biography & Autobiography, Presidents & Heads of State The BISAC Subject Code is Elections, Political Process, Political Science

Additional info

The publisher of the Playing with Fire is Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. The imprint is Penguin Audio. It is supplied by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. The ISBN-13 is 9780525498230.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

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