The Rehnquist Choice
The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court
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Narrated by:
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Boyd Gaines
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John W. Dean
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By:
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John W. Dean
About this listen
It seemed a straightforward choice of a relatively young, academically outstanding and politically seasoned lawyer who shared Richard Nixon's philosophy of "strict constructionism." As Nixon's White House Counsel, John Dean reveals for the first time that the choice was anything but straightforward. The truth is that Rehnquist's nomination was the result of a dramatic, Nixonian roller coaster. Rehnquist was a last-minute longshot who had once been dismissed by Nixon as a "clown." Only John Dean - Rehnquist's champion at the time - knows the full, improbable story.
Dean's gripping tale is loaded with revelations, such as Nixon's plan to pack the court by forcing resignations - before his inauguration.
Using newly released White House tapes, and thousands of previously unseen documents, Dean puts listeners directly in the Oval Office with Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichmann, Mitchell, Rehnquist, and the candidates they considered.
The Rehnquist Choice fills in a long-missing explanation of the making of the man who wrote the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore and presided over the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton.
©2001 John W. Dean, All Rights Reserved (P)2001 Simon & Schuster Inc., AUDIOWORKS Is an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By PearlGirl on 08-19-09
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A Woman in Charge
- The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton
- By: Carl Bernstein
- Narrated by: Dick Rodstein
- Length: 24 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Carl Bernstein's stunning portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton shows us, as nothing else has, the true trajectory of her life and career, with its zigzag bursts of risks taken and safety sought. Marshaling all the skills and energy that propelled his history-making Pulitzer Prize reporting on Watergate, Bernstein gives us the most detailed, sophisticated, comprehensive, and revealing account of Hilary Rodham Clinton yet.
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in depth and well-written
- By Katherine on 07-20-07
By: Carl Bernstein
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Forcing the Spring
- Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality
- By: Jo Becker
- Narrated by: Jamie Leonhart
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A tour de force of groundbreaking reportage by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jo Becker, Forcing the Spring follows the historic legal challenge mounted against California’s ban on same-sex marriage, a remarkable lawsuit that forced the issue of marriage equality before the highest court in the land. For nearly five years Becker embedded with the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, was given free rein within the legal and political war rooms where strategy was plotted, and attended every day of the trial and every appellate argument.
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A stirring courtroom drama
- By David on 05-19-14
By: Jo Becker
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Ike and Dick
- Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
- By: Jeffrey Frank
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Nixon was a young Navy officer when he first saw Dwight D. Eisenhower through a storm of tickertape as Manhattan celebrated the end of the war in Europe. Seven years later, Nixon was Eisenhower's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket-the beginning of a political and personal relationship that lasted for nearly twenty years. Despite a gulf that separated them by age and temperament, their association evolved into a collaboration that helped to shape the nation's political ideology.
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He's against NIxon
- By James A. Bretney on 01-20-14
By: Jeffrey Frank
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Write It When I'm Gone
- Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford
- By: Thomas M. DeFrank
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In an extraordinary series of private interviews, conducted over 16 years with the stipulation that they not be released until after Gerald Ford's death, the 38th president of the United States reveals a profoundly different side of himself: funny, reflective, gossipy, strikingly candid, and the stuff of headlines.
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An easy historical listen...
- By Darrell Rupe on 05-26-08
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Frost/Nixon
- By: David Frost
- Narrated by: David Frost
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Abridged
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This is Frost's absorbing story of his pursuit of Richard Nixon and is no less revealing of his own toughness and pertinacity than of the ex-president's elusiveness. Frost's encounters with such figures as Swifty Lazar, Ron Ziegler, potential sponsors, and Nixon as negotiator are nothing short of hilarious, and his insight into the taping of the programs themselves is fascinating.
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Great excerpts and interviews, just an okay book.
- By steve on 01-03-13
By: David Frost
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The Path to Power
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson
- By: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 40 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.
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The Best of all Biographies
- By David C. Daggett on 12-14-13
By: Robert A. Caro
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The Steal
- The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It
- By: Mark Bowden, Matthew Teague
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the dedicated individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on our election system and ensured that every legal vote was counted and that the will of the people prevailed.
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Fascinating local insights
- By CharlieSeymourJr on 01-13-22
By: Mark Bowden, and others
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First
- Sandra Day O'Connor
- By: Evan Thomas
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings - doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.
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Remarkable woman, well served in this book.
- By KathrynVB on 04-05-19
By: Evan Thomas
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The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson
- The White House Years
- By: Joseph A. Califano Jr.
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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President Lyndon Johnson was bigger than life - and no one who worked for him or was subjected to the "Johnson treatment" ever forgot it. As Johnson's "Deputy President of Domestic Affairs", Joseph A. Califano's unique relationship with the president greatly enriches our understanding of our 36th president. Califano shows listeners LBJ's commitment to economic and social revolution, and his willingness to do whatever it took to achieve his goals.
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LBJ The Greatest President of 20th century
- By David W. Goldstein on 07-28-15
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Contempt
- A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation
- By: Ken Starr
- Narrated by: Ken Starr
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty years after the Starr Report and the Clinton impeachment, former special prosecutor Ken Starr finally shares his definitive account of this period in American history. Now Starr finally shares his unique perspective on the investigation that began with the Whitewater land deal and spread to a wide range of President Clinton's actions, including accusations of sexual harassment and perjury in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Starr's narrative includes behind-the-scenes details that have never before emerged as well as a new analysis from the perspective of history.
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Thought provoking and honest!
- By Sarah on 09-13-18
By: Ken Starr
What listeners say about The Rehnquist Choice
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Verified Purchaser
- 04-30-16
Hard to hear
Many of the excerpts from the Nixon tapes are garbled and hard to understand. It would have been better to have the narrator just read the text.
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- Ian C Robertson
- 05-14-15
Specialist Interest
This is a title that falls into the above category. I found it fascinating, but it has a very limited audience; probably those interested in law, politics and the Nixon administration, or some combination of these matters. As is usual, Dean has thoroughly researched the topic and has not relied upon his own first hand knowledge. In this regard, the device of having Dean read the passages that are his own reflections is a very useful and appropriate one.
As for the rest of the production, Boyd Gaines was a more than competent reader who captured the characters. If anything, his reading was more consumable than the actual recordings from the Nixon White House, the latter being very difficult to understand. This difficulty only increased my admiration for Dean's diligence in sorting through all of the available tapes for the purpose of The Nixon Defence (see my earlier review).
If you don't fall into the above categories, I think you could safely give this title the miss. If you fall into one or more of them, then I think you'll find this as interesting as I did.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Philo
- 04-20-15
Nixon and staff behind scenes making decisions
Here is a fly-on-the-wall, blow-by-blow of the Nixon and his team in action. Richard Nixon is a boundless case study, this eternally snarky, coarse, calculating poker player. Everything and everyone is another card to "play." Here are the ethnic and gender slurs, perhaps an echo of the onetime supply officer in the WW2 Pacific playing cards with his buddies, with a layer of ever-calculating scrappy lawyer on top. At moments, he literally growls and snarls. A terrific editing job has been done, moving seamlessly between the various players. Yes, I take anyone's self-justifying narrative with a huge grain of salt, and that includes John Dean's, and the later book makes me wince at moments. But that does not spoil the piece, because so much of its content is so well documented (and even includes tapes of the actual conversations). I think it's time for me to rummage through some more of these Nixon "straight up" audios.
I see another sub-plot here too, quite pertinent to today's evaporating privacy issues for politicians as well as everyone else. Nixon I believe anticipated his oval office tapes would be confidentially his alone, to vet and filter out at his leisure for the historical record. The press has always served the legitimate interest in widely disclosing matters of public news interest (of course alongside its profit motives). Nixon for his part was obsessed with the press and that dynamic -- and they were going for the jugular with him, and all kinds of people were leaking supposedly private information. This, mixed with his personality, brought us Watergate. But he was not completely unhinged -- his frustrations had serious elements for us to ponder. The public cannot demand every utterance of every government official at the moment it is made. But in our everything-networked world, are we losing something, with microphones everywhere, document retention rules? Can any of us function in a high pressure situation where we are every moment presumably speaking to eternal history as represented by an army of adversaries over long periods analyzing and parsing every word? This has been an issue not only for Nixon but for both Clintons. Political opponents on either side are quick to make hay from these things, but they should reflect that they live in glass houses themselves, in terms of a world that watches every event and never forgets. It is not new, but its intensity and these particular dynamics are recent. And much of this started here, as we can hear and consider. Our civilization is maturing through this tech revolution, and some will find themselves in a glare unimagined.
As a last remark: if judicial matters are of little interest to you, you might be bored. This is certainly not as "juicy" as secret bombing programs and such. But for me, it is rich.
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3 people found this helpful
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- inearthsha
- 08-31-04
Insightful look at Nixon and the Court
As far as audiobooks go, The Rehnquist Choice does well at providing insight into the politics and maneuvering that shaped the Court from the 70s to the present. Well written and read, it does not fall into boring recapitulation and tedious details. It provides nuances and insight that only someone from the inside can bring. While no one formerly on the inside is completely ojbective, John Dean does well to balance his subjective position with the facts of his involvement.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 12-20-15
An Insider's viewpoint
With the release of the Nixon Tapes more books are coming out based on new information revealed in the tapes. This book is one of those books. The book is based on 420 hours of the recently released tapes that cover the 34 days in 1971 when Nixon filled two Supreme Court vacancies. Dean used the Tapes, his own papers from when he was Nixon’s White House Counsel, and documents from the National Archives. I never thought I would be listening to the famous Nixon Tapes.
Apparently Nixon considered 36 candidates to fill the positions vacated by retiring Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan. Dean states that Nixon’s goal was to slow down integration and move the Court to the right. When Rehnquist was being considered Nixon was told “Rehnquist made his Arizona mentor Barry Goldwater look like a liberal.” I cannot believe that Nixon considered nominating Senator Bird to the Court; he was even a Democrat not a Republican besides being a form KKK member.
Dean reveals the “vetting” process used by the Nixon White House and Justice Department to select nominees to the Court. The book is well written and easy to follow with lots of quotes from the tapes to give reader the feeling they are sitting in the White House alongside Nixon. The book is short at six hours. During Nixon’s Presidency he appointed four men to the Supreme Court: William Rehnquist, Lewis Powell Jr., Harry Blackmum and he appointed Warren E. Burger as Chief Justice. Boyd Gaines does a good job narrating the book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sauce
- 04-05-11
YUM Yim Yam
John Dean is delidiode.
I loved it. The best part kept on coming up. If you like Nixon, or wanna find out why he is da king, den dis book is for ye.
WUP WUP WUP
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1 person found this helpful