Crooked, Austin Grossman
Crooked, Austin Grossman
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Crooked

Author: Austin Grossman

Narrator: Kiff VandenHeuvel

Unabridged: 11 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/28/2015


Synopsis

Award-winning novelist Austin Grossman reimagines the Cold War as an epic battle against the occult waged by the ultimate American antihero: Richard Nixon.

Richard Milhous Nixon lived one of the most improbable lives of the twentieth century. Our thirty-seventh president's political career spanned the button-down fifties, the Mad Men sixties, and the turbulent seventies. He faced down the Russians, the Chinese, and ultimately his own government. The man went from political mastermind to a national joke, sobbing in the Oval Office, leaving us with one burning question: how could he have lost it all?

Here for the first time is the tale told in his own words: the terrifying supernatural secret he stumbled upon as a young man, the truth behind the Cold War, and the truth behind the Watergate cover-up. What if our nation's worst president was actually a pivotal figure caught in a desperate struggle between ordinary life and horrors from another reality? What if the man we call our worst president was, in truth, our greatest?

In Crooked, Nixon finally reveals the secret history of modern American politics as only Austin Grossman could reimagine it. Combining Lovecraftian suspense, international intrigue, Russian honey traps, and a presidential marriage whose secrets and battles of attrition were their own heroic saga, Grossman's novel is a masterwork of alternative history, equal parts mesmerizing character study and nail-biting Faustian thriller.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kemper on October 20, 2015

Even in a fictional book in which he’s supposed to be the hero Richard Nixon can't help but be an asshole. The concept here is that when Nixon was an underhanded congressman trying to prove that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy he inadvertently stumbled across a hidden occult world of Lovecratfian style h......more

Goodreads review by Nick on August 01, 2015

Nixon fights Cthulhu - not hand to hand, and not by name, but that's your premise, and let's just fess up and say Oooooooh, yeaaah! Does it work? Yes, but maybe not the way you're thinking. Austin Grossman brings you Nixon like you've never seen him before: vulnerable, self-hating, adrift. This isn't......more

Goodreads review by Ron on July 22, 2015

Sorry, Woodward and Bernstein. You were duped, along with the rest of us. That so-called Watergate scandal was just a little play-acting to cover up the real story, a crucible of horror that would melt the face off any ordinary American. Except, of course, for Richard Milhous Nixon. Here, finally, our......more

Goodreads review by Paul on September 05, 2016

3.5 stars interesting and entertaining but it could have been more fun......more

Goodreads review by Jim on September 07, 2015

Great premise, shoddy execution. While the author clearly knew "stuff" about Nixon, he could have better used the Nixon voice and style that people recognize to better comedic effect. Instead, the narrator just sounded like some dude and not Nixon. Also, for a short book, the plot took too long to u......more