The author begins this volume on election day in 1962 when Richard Nixon, defeated in his bid for the California governorship, retired from political life. But staging one of the greatest political comebacks in American history, on November 6, 1968, Richard Nixon achieved the ultimate triumph and was elected president of the US. With the help of Henry Kissinger, Nixon opened relations with China, established detente with the USSR and withdrew troops from the bloody stalemate in Vietnam - yet in preparing for the 1972 election, he had begun sowing the seeds of his own destruction in the maelstrom the country would soon refer to as "Watergate".