The Strong Man

PRAISE FOR THE STRONG MAN

“James Rosen has brought us a fascinating and provocative account of John Mitchell’s life. Using fresh and unexpected sources, The Strong Man dispels some of the mysteries that still linger around this central figure of the Nixon administration and Watergate. Rosen has achieved the difficult task of showing us heretofore unseen facets of the subculture that led to the greatest scandal in American history.”
—Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789–1989

“James Rosen’s The Strong Man is excellent. Few novels read as well as this first-rate blend of history and biography. Crammed with new information and steeped in deep research, political street smarts, fresh insights, and crisp, clear writing, it is a major contribution to the history of Watergate and the Nixon presidency.”
—Dan Rather, CBS News White House correspondent, 1969–1974

“The Strong Man is a fascinating work: a sympathetic portrait of John Mitchell, the Big Enchilada, Richard Nixon’s campaign manager and attorney general, who went to prison rather than talk about Watergate—and then took his secrets to the grave.”
—Richard Reeves, author of President Nixon: Alone in the White House

“Rosen has captured the players in Watergate as if he were on duty at the White House during the scandal. It is a tragic story that reads like a novel . . . The most accurate book on Watergate and the president’s men—and the president—yet to be published.”
—Dwight L. Chapin, special assistant to President Nixon

“For anyone who lived through Watergate or has studied it since, John Mitchell was always the dour, jowly, menacing embodiment of the nefarious Nixon administration. James Rosen’s original and penetrating portrait of Richard Nixon’s attorney general, the only alumnus of that office ever to land in prison, unveils the more complex figure lurking beneath the caricature. The Strong Man sheds important new light on a defining episode in American history.”
—David Margolick, author of Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink

“This book is a veritable hologram. You feel that you are watching John Mitchell, The Strong Man, move and bend wills, whack and get whacked—right here!—in real time!—and at the end you will feel it neurally, in the solar plexus, when he pays the stiff price of D.C. Hold ’Em politics.”
—Tom Wolfe, author of A Man in Full and I Am Charlotte Simmons

“Relentless…engrossing…Displays wide-ranging and obsessive reporting, especially about the Watergate story…John Dean comes across as a duplicitous manipulator, Jeb Magruder as a spineless liar, Gordon Liddy as a maniacal soldier of misfortune." — Washington Post

"Engrossing…unfailingly honest reportage…Rosen makes a convincing case that perjured testimony, especially from White House aides John Dean and Jeb Magruder, formed the basis of the case that made Mitchell the highest-ranking government official ever to serve time." — Robert Novak, Weekly Standard

"[A]s both detective and investigative reporter, Rosen cuts through conflicting accounts of Mitchell’s life, tapping into previously unpublished documents…and presenting a thoroughly documented but vibrant portrait of a complicated and deeply flawed public figure." — Jonathan Karl, Wall Street Journal

"Superb…Rosen, a reporter for Fox News, has performed Herculean labors in unraveling Mitchell’s career…arguing persuasively that Mitchell was essentially ambivalent about, if not opposed to, the machinations of Nixon’s subordinates." — Jacob Heilbrunn, The National Interest

“A surprisingly fresh look at the scandal…Rosen makes a compelling case that Mitchell was more sinned against than sinning in Watergate.” — Boston Globe

"The most revealing and insightful book I’ve read about that era. Profoundly researched for 20 years by a reporter scrupulous about source notes, it is both a sympathetic and an unsparing character study of a complex historic figure previously portrayed as the caricature of a villain. I knew the dour Mitchell almost ‘in full’ and can attest to this being a Pulitzer-quality biography.” — William Safire, New York Times Magazine