Gerald R. Ford by Douglas Brinkley

Gerald R. Ford by Douglas Brinkley

The "accidental" president whose innate decency and steady hand restored the presidency after its greatest crisis.

When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office without having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month into his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward.

Many people today think of Ford as a man who stumbled a lot--clumsy on his feet and in politics--but acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley shows him to be a man of independent thought and conscience, who never allowed party loyalty to prevail over his sense of right and wrong. As a young congressman, he stood up to the isolationists in the Republican leadership, promoting a vigorous role for America in the world. Later, as House minority leader and as president, he challenged the right wing of his party, refusing to bend to their vision of confrontation with the Communist world. And after the fall of Saigon, Ford also overruled his advisers by allowing Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States, arguing that to do so was the humane thing to do.

Brinkley draws on exclusive interviews with Ford and on previously unpublished documents (including a remarkable correspondence between Ford and Nixon stretching over four decades), fashioning a masterful reassessment of Gerald R. Ford's presidency and his underappreciated legacy to the nation.

Brinkley was the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense and Director of the Task Force for Economic and Stability Operations for five years, tasked for reviving Iraq and Afghanistan's economies. For injuries received in a car bomb attack in Baghdad in 2010, he was awarded the Joint Outstanding Civilian Service Medal and the Secretary of Defense-Defense of Freedom Medal. He has been profiled in Businessweek, Fortune, New York Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and The Economist, and has pieces published in Newsweek and Military Review.