With startling candor, Nixon reveals his beliefs, doubts, and behind-the-scenes decisions, shedding new light on his landmark diplomatic and domestic initiatives, political campaigns, and historic decision to resign from the presidency.Memoirs, spanning Nixon’s formative years through his presidency, reveals the personal side of Richard Nixon. Witness his youth, college years, and wartime experiences, events which would shape his outward philosophies and eventually his presidency—and shape our lives. Follow his meteoric rise to national prominence and the great peaks and depths of his presidency.Throughout his career Richard Nixon made extensive notes about his ideas, conversations, activities, meetings. During his presidency, from November 1971 until April 1973 and again in June and July 1974, he kept an almost daily diary of reflections, analyses, and perceptions. These notes and diary dictations, quoted throughout this book, provide a unique insight into the complexities of the modern presidency and the great issues of American policy and politics.

    Technically, Richard M. Nixon was not impeached; he resigned before he could be. But, he resigned because impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the US was assured. And, the House took an overwhelming vote to impeach him in absentia.There were two others, but history has labeled both of them unjustified and purely political actions—Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Bill Clinton in 1999. Neither was removed from office, however, the Senate votes to do so falling short of the two-thirds majority necessary to do so. Only Nixon left office because of impeachment.The hardcover edition of High Crimes and Misdemeanors was published in 1978 by W.W. Norton. The book jacket flap read:Several units of government played vital roles in Richard Nixon’s eventual ouster. He could resist all but one. Congress.The Congress most directly represented the American people. After twenty-eight of the thirty-eight members of the House Judiciary Committee voted for impeachment in July 1974, the choices Nixon had were obvious.Howard Fields covered the total impeachment process for United Press International from April 30, 1973, until the summer of 1974, when Nixon resigned and the committee issued its final damning report, probably putting presidential impeachment to rest for another one hundred years.His is the dramatic story of an impeachment inquiry that was accidentally successful, a process directed by an overly cautious Peter W. Rodino, concerned lest he go down in history as the leader of a kangaroo court. But, it is also the story of an impeachment inquiry that probably would have failed in other hands.Richard Nixon has continued to claim his innocence, but this book sets forth the evidence as it was put before an extraordinary gathering of congressmen and congresswomen of every political persuasion, lawmakers who, for the most part, reluctantly, concluded that there was sufficient evidence of impeachable offenses to warrant Nixon’s removal from office.The impeachment proceedings against Nixon not only established the facts of a case, but strengthened the democratic system of government.Howard Fields lives in Arlington, Virginia.Unfortunately, the book flap was not prophetic; impeachment was not put to rest “for another hundred years.”This edition of High Crimes and Misdemeanors is being published now because the word “impeachment” is being heard increasingly in relation to another president, Donald J. Trump. In fact, many of the allegedly impeachable offenses peppered throughout this book are being leveled against him.