On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

Smith, Richard Norton

Published by Random House, New York, 2014

About this Item

As new condition dark silver gray boards with a black spine and silver spine lettering contained in an as new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by Richard Norton Smith; Author Dedication; Preliminary Page Quotes; A Note to the Reader; Prologue: July 1964 "This is Still a Free Country, Ladies and Gentlemen"; Acknowledgments; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index and About the Author. "From acclaimed historian Richard Norton Smith comes the definitive life of an American icon: Nelson Rockefeller - one of the most complex and compelling figures of the twentieth century. Fourteen years in the making, this magisterial biography of the original Rockefeller Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over two hundred interviews, including Rockefeller's own unpublished reminiscences. Grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Nelson coveted the White House from childhood. "When you think of what I had," he once remarked, "what else was there to aspire to?" Before he was thirty he had helped his father develop Rockefeller Center and his mother establish the Museum of Modern Art. At thirty-two he was Franklin Roosevelt's wartime coordinator for Latin America. As New York's four-term governor he set national standards in education, the environment, and urban policy. The charismatic face of liberal Republicanism, Rockefeller championed civil rights and health insurance for all. Three times he sought the presidency -- arguably in the wrong party. At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, locked in an epic battle with Barry Goldwater, Rockefeller denounced extremist elements in the GOP, a moment that changed the party forever. But he could not wrest the nomination from the Arizona conservative, or from Richard Nixon four years later. In the end, he had to settle for two dispiriting years as vice president under Gerald Ford. In On His Own Terms, RIchard Norton Simth re-creates Rockefeller's improbable rise to the governor's mansion, his politically disastrous divorce and remarriage, and his often surprising relationships with presidents and political leaders from FDR to Henry Kissinger. A frustrated architect turned master builder, an avid collector of art and an unabashed ladies' man, "Rocky" promoted fallout shelters and affordalbe housing with equal enthusiasm. From the deadly 1971 prision uprising at Attica and unceasing battles with New York City mayor John Lindsay to his son's unsolved disappearance (and the grisly theories it spawned), the punitive drug laws that bear his name, and the much-gossiped-about circumstances of his death, Nelson Rockefeller's was a life of astonishing color, range, and relevance. On His Own Terms, a masterpiece of the biographer's art, vividly captures the soaring optimism, polarizing politics, and inner turmoil of this American Original." - from the inner front jacket flap.

Seller Inventory # 006369

Bibliographic Details

• Title: On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller
• Publisher: Random House, New York
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New