“Michael Koncewicz’s deep knowledge, developed over years of service at the Nixon Library, enables him to illuminate previously unseen hidden struggles to preserve the American republic. This is a bracing reminder of the threat to constitutional order posed by a president who wields power without self-restraint.”—Ken Hughes, author of Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection

“Thanks to Koncewicz’s exhaustive research in newly released Nixon tapes, we now have new American heroes in a group of moderate and honorable civil servants who countered Richard Nixon’s dogged attempts to expand his power. In the process, Koncewicz offers a chilling account of how that deeply authoritarian president managed to push American politics to the right. This intelligent and important book should be must reading for anyone worried about the current decline of American democracy.”—Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America

“A superb and compelling account of the handful of principled officials in Nixon’s administration who resisted White House abuses of power. This is one of the first scholarly works to apply the most recently released trove of Nixon’s White House tapes to the study of internal executive branch affairs. Koncewicz’s description of the sequence of events that led to the Saturday Night Massacre is especially first-rate—and eerily relevant to today’s troubled politics. The reader is left hoping that government still attracts public servants with the integrity of Koncewicz’s subjects.”—Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party