"You'll never make it in politics... You just don't know how to lie," Richard Nixon once told an adviser. During his presidential re-election bid in 1972, Nixon showed the world just how much he believed this sentiment to be true. He organized a team to cause mischief during the race, setting off stink bombs at his opponents' rallies, sending bogus pizza orders to the Democratic campaign, and famously breaking into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. He even hired a 19-year-old political operative named Karl Rove, after the young Republican stole letterhead from a political opponent and distributed invitations to a party that promised "Free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing." No wonder history remembers him as Tricky Dick.

According to Rick Perlstein, the dark side of Nixon's personality wasn't a sideshow, but rather the driving motivation behind his presidency. In his new book, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, Perlstein portrays the former president as a striving egoist who constantly wrestled with crippling insecurities, while seeing conspiracies around every corner. Both Nixon and his presidency have been analyzed to the point of tedium, but nothing about Perlstein's writing is boring. This book is packed with intriguing details, fresh insights, and fascinating passages — none more powerful than the hour-by-hour account of the riot-packed 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as experienced by viewers of network television. Perlstein's central thesis is that the nation's 37th president ushered in a new phase of American life — dubbed Nixonland — in which the national consensus was shattered and domestic tranquility interrupted until this day. That new political landscape created a fundamentally different reality for presidential politics, one dominated by gamesmanship and populist outrage. It is true that the conflict has evolved, but one need only look at some of the charges made in this election to know that Nixonland lives on.

-Matt Compton