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Richard Norton Smith
One His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Program 6:00 pm
Followed by a book signing
From acclaimed historian Richard Norton Smith comes the definitive life of an American icon: Nelson Rockefeller, one of the most complex and compelling political 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Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over two hundred interviews, including Rockefeller's own unpublished reminiscences.
Please join us at Roosevelt House to hear Richard Norton Smith explore the life and career of the New York governor who, at the height of his power and influence in the 1950s and '60s, defined a new kind of Republicanism. In On His Own Terms, Richard Norton Smith recounts 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.