31 DAYS The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today

Barry Werth details the 31 days between Gerald Ford's appointment to the presidency and his pardoning of disgraced Richard Nixon. That seems so long ago, until the names Donald Rumsfeld, then ambassador to NATO, and Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld's deputy, come up. Horne's got that "network newsman" voice, which is well suited for reading nonfiction books, but at times he sounds bored with the minutia of political sausage-making that thrills political junkies. Random House missed an opportunity to enhance Werth's work. Instead of Horne's sometimes dry readings, the production could have included actual audio of Nixon and Ford where Werth quotes them at some length. D.J.M. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 06]