Richard Norton Smith. (2014). On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller. Random House Publishing Group.

Richard Norton Smith. 2014. On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller. Random House Publishing Group.

Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller. Random House Publishing Group, 2014.

Richard Norton Smith. On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller. Random House Publishing Group, 2014.

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Smith, Richard Norton
   • bioText: Richard Norton Smith is the author of Thomas E. Dewey and His Times (a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize); An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover; The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation; The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880-1955; and Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation. He has served as the director of presidential libraries commemorating Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. As C-SPAN’s in-house historian, he appears frequently on that network. He has also been a regular contributor to the PBS NewsHour, and an ABC News presidential historian.
   • name: Richard Norton Smith

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On His Own Terms

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, BOOKLIST, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • 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Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over two hundred interviews, including Rockefeller’s own unpublished reminiscences.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 Smith 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 affordable housing with equal enthusiasm. From the deadly 1971 prison 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.
 
Praise for On His Own Terms
 
“[An] enthralling biography . . . Richard Norton Smith has written what will probably stand as a definitive Life. . . . On His Own Terms succeeds as an absorbing, deeply informative portrait of an important, complicated, semi-heroic figure who, in his approach to the limits of government and to government’s relation to the governed, belonged in every sense to another century.”—The New Yorker
 
“[A] splendid biography . . . a clear-eyed, exhaustively researched account of a significant and fascinating American life.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“A compelling read . . . What makes the book fascinating for a contemporary professional is not so much any one thing that Rockefeller achieved, but the portrait of the world he inhabited not so very long...

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New Yorker
   • content: "[An] enthralling biography . . . Richard Norton Smith has written what will probably stand as a definitive Life. . . . On His Own Terms succeeds as an absorbing, deeply informative portrait of an important, complicated, semi-heroic figure who, in his approach to the limits of government and to government's relation to the governed, belonged in every sense to another century."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
   • content: "[A] splendid biography . . . On His Own Terms is a clear-eyed, exhaustively researched account of a significant and fascinating American life."--The Wall Street Journal "A compelling read . . . What makes the book fascinating for a contemporary professional is not so much any one thing that [Nelson] Rockefeller achieved, but the portrait of the world he inhabited not so very long ago."--The New York Times "Richard Norton Smith spent fourteen years researching this life of Rockefeller. [On His Own Terms] has perception and scholarly authority and is immensely readable."--The Economist "With a keen eye for richness of detail, a gift for recounting the sweep of his subject's life and the mastery of a prose artist, [Richard Norton Smith] offers a complete portrait, one that neither exaggerates Rockefeller's accomplishments nor downplays his faults. And he depicts Rockefeller--'allergic to inactivity' as a man whose breadth of interests and depth of determination continue to astound--in all his contradictions. . . . Inspired in conception, incisive in execution, On His Own Terms displays the artistry of its author and the significance of its subject."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist (starred review)
   • content: "A nightmare for political handlers, the man who claimed 'a Democratic heart with a Republican head' poses no small challenge for a biographer. But after a decade of exhaustive research, Smith delivers a compelling portrait of a man who defied the simplifying ideologies of his age. . . . Complete and balanced, a biography of exceptional substance."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Douglas Brinkley, author of Cronkite and The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
   • content: "Richard Norton Smith has brought us a gripping, magisterial, deeply researched life of one of the most intriguing figures in American political history. In Smith's vivid rendering, Nelson Rockefeller is exuberant, talented, conflicted, apparently unstoppable, and then, ultimately, poignant amid the frustration of his Ozymandian ambitions. Along with the tale of Rockefeller's life, On His Own Terms also brings us a timely, knowing close-up view of what used to be called--at its zenith, which now seems so long ago--the 'Rockefeller wing' of the Republican party."--Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789--1989 and The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941--1945 "The amount of first-class scholarship Richard Norton Smith undertook to write about Nelson Rockefeller is utterly remarkable. This is one of the greatest cradle-to-grave biographies written in the past fifty years. It's never dull and always joyfully lucid. Highly recommended!"
5. • premium: False
   • source: Michael Barone, American Enterprise Institute, senior political analyst, Washington Examiner, and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics
   • content: "No one knows more about the American presidency than Richard Norton Smith. In On His Own Terms, readers will marvel, laugh, and delight in Smith's long-awaited biography of almost president Nelson Rockefeller. In history writing at its best, Smith's insightful account of the struggle for the soul of the Republican Party fifty years ago sounds at many moments uncannily contemporary."--Ronald C. White, Jr., author of A. Lincoln: A Biography "Perhaps no American in public life has had as varied a career as Nelson Rockefeller--art collector, real estate developer, Latin America policy czar, presidential candidate, and governor of New York for fifteen turbulent years. Richard Norton Smith brings Rocky back to life in all his ebullience. Warning: This is, appropriately, a long book and one that's impossible to put down."
6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from October 1, 2014
     Presidential library director and C-SPAN in-house historian Smith (The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1997, etc.) delivers a monumental biography of the charismatic vice president and four-term governor of New York.Grandson and namesake of the two most hated men in Progressive-era America, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (1908-1979) was determined "to succeed despite his name" and to "polish the Rockefeller legacy like fine silver" through public service and the socially responsible use of the immense wealth and influence at his disposal. Rockefeller was the last of the titans of progressive Republicanism. "He had long believed that his country, like his family, must justify its riches through good works and the sharing of wealth," writes Smith. He worked comfortably in appointed positions in Republican and Democratic administrations but ultimately "hungered for the legitimacy uniquely bestowed by the ballot box." As governor of New York, Rockefeller advanced measures combating discrimination in various forms and engaged in a building boom, much of it financed through constitutionally dodgy bonding schemes. In national politics, however, Rockefeller ultimately proved too liberal for the Republicans, the pillar of the "eastern establishment" at a time when the party was becoming more stridently conservative. In person, Rockefeller was a force of nature-optimistic, impatient, hard-charging and strikingly virile, engaging in sex with subordinates in a way that would never be hidden or tolerated today. Ironically, his presidential hopes were scotched by his very public divorce and remarriage, along with a considerable measure of tactical ineptitude. Rockefeller's enormously full life as a diplomat, bureaucrat, politician, businessman, and avid collector and proponent of modern art justifies the prodigious scale of this intensively researched work, presented in sturdy, confident prose with the occasional well-placed barb. The author maintains a dignified objectivity throughout, recounting events with penetrating perceptivity but refraining from intrusive editorial comment or analysis. An overdue comprehensive biography of a giant of mid-20th-century American politics.

     COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from October 15, 2014
     A nightmare for political handlers, the man who claimed a Democratic heart with a Republican head poses no small challenge for a biographer. But after a decade of exhaustive research, Smith delivers a compelling portrait of a man who defied the simplifying ideologies of his age. Born to privilege but schooled as a social progressive by his philanthropist parents, Nelson Rockefeller traveled an improbable trajectory, serving as both a Roosevelt New Dealer and an Eisenhower Cold Warrior, repeatedly demonstrating exceptional leadership and unflagging energy. In-depth research illuminates Rockefeller's exceptional record as a governor of New York, expanding welfare benefits, protecting the environment, and subsidizing the arts, only to alienate the state's liberals with his forceful handling of the Attica Prison riots. But Rockefeller's maverick impulses emerge most clearly in Smith's account of why the governor clashed with Barry Goldwater over the future of the GOP. Readers see how Rockefeller's liberal sympathies repeatedly doomed his presidential aspirations as conservative intraparty foes frustrated his hopes, refusing even to recognize his loyal service as Gerald Ford's vice president. And though Smith focuses on Rockefeller's public service, he does delve into the tangled marital and family life behind that service. Complete and balanced, a biography of exceptional substance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     June 15, 2014
     

     Pulitzer Prize finalist Smith spent 12 years on this biography of Nelson Rockefeller, drawing on thousands of documents and over 100 interviews to paint a portrait of the one-time New York governor and U.S. vice president who led a storied life on the side. Cast as an account of the sort of moderate Republican hardly seen today.

     Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from November 1, 2014
     

     Smith, past director of several presidential libraries and in-house historian for C-SPAN, has written a piece of first-rate scholarship on one of the most complex public figures of the 20th century, Nelson Rockefeller (1908-79). If you thought you knew "Rocky" (a name he disliked greatly), think again. At the hands of this acclaimed presidential scholar, we see a towering public figure in all his ambition, glory, and disappointment. In many respects, Rockefeller's story is America's story. Granted, he was born into one of the most consequential and controversial financial and social dynasties in the history of the United States. But, whether suffering from dyslexia or not realizing his insatiable political thirst for the presidency, Rockefeller's life narrative echoes America's quest for greatness and the dangers of hubris. Simply put, Smith makes his subject live, from the cradle to his final days. Rockefeller was a private person who loved the limelight and was as colorful as he was conflicted. As Smith so ably documents, he loved both the combat of the political arena and the solitude of the art gallery. VERDICT This insightful work proves that a masterly, monumental biography can still captivate our attention, and thus belongs on the shelves of libraries serving patrons who are interested in American political history. [See Prepub Alert, 6/2/14.]--Stephen Kent Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, ID

     Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      November 1, 2014
      

      Smith, past director of several presidential libraries and in-house historian for C-SPAN, has written a piece of first-rate scholarship on one of the most complex public figures of the 20th century, Nelson Rockefeller (1908-79). If you thought you knew "Rocky" (a name he disliked greatly), think again. At the hands of this acclaimed presidential scholar, we see a towering public figure in all his ambition, glory, and disappointment. In many respects, Rockefeller's story is America's story. Granted, he was born into one of the most consequential and controversial financial and social dynasties in the history of the United States. But, whether suffering from dyslexia or not realizing his insatiable political thirst for the presidency, Rockefeller's life narrative echoes America's quest for greatness and the dangers of hubris. Simply put, Smith makes his subject live, from the cradle to his final days. Rockefeller was a private person who loved the limelight and was as colorful as he was conflicted. As Smith so ably documents, he loved both the combat of the political arena and the solitude of the art gallery. VERDICT This insightful work proves that a masterly, monumental biography can still captivate our attention, and thus belongs on the shelves of libraries serving patrons who are interested in American political history. [See Prepub Alert, 6/2/14.]--Stephen Kent Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, ID

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, BOOKLIST, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • 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...

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