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Richard Nixon’s rise from a modest Quaker upbringing in Yorba Linda and Whittier, California, through Duke Law School and Navy service, to his hard-fought campaigns against Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas. The Alger Hiss case makes him a national figure, the “Checkers” speech saves his place on Eisenhower’s ticket, and eight years as Vice President end in a razor-thin loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and a bitter defeat for California governor in 1962.

Nixon stages a political comeback and wins the presidency in 1968. In office he seeks a “generation of peace” with Henry Kissinger but expands the war into Cambodia, faces mass protests and Kent State, and builds a secret apparatus against leaks after the Pentagon Papers. His opening to China and the arms-control summit in Moscow mark the peak of his career, just as burglars are caught inside the Watergate complex.

The White House tries to contain the Watergate break-in while Nixon wins a landslide reelection in 1972 and ends America’s role in Vietnam. As the burglars talk and John Dean turns to prosecutors, the cover-up unravels through the Senate hearings and the discovery of the secret Oval Office tapes. On August 9, 1974, Nixon becomes the first president to resign.