In 1974 Richard Nixon grudgingly made transcripts of his secret tapes from White House conversations of 1972/1973, had them bound in a dozen or so books and gave them to Congress, hoping that would stave off the investigation. It didn't. The expletives, and who knows what else, are edited from the tapes, but even so the conversations here eventually helped bring down his presidency. With commentaries by the staff of the Washington Post, this book is a chilling reminder of a dark time in our country's past, when a president, his aides, and much of the country thought that the laws of the country did not apply to the President of the United States. ( )

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