THE PEACEMAKER by Ben Stein

THE PEACEMAKER by Ben Stein

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.”  – Matthew 5:9

“I don’t think any president has been more wrongly persecuted than Nixon, ever. I just think he was a saint.” – Ben Stein

From Ben Stein, New York Times bestselling author, humorist and former speech writer for both Nixon and Ford administrations – a powerful (and humorous) thinker on economics, politics, education and history and motivation – a personal memoir of his friend Richard Nixon: The man, patriot, president, peacemaker and visionary. 

The Richard Nixon Stein remembers and lovingly describes has almost nothing to do with the Richard Nixon as portrayed in most media. In Stein’s view, Richard Nixon was a born peacemaker, a saint. Stein believes Nixon was tortured, abused, beat up by the Beautiful People, but through it all, above all, he was a peacemaker, a trait he inherited from his Quaker mother. 

Nixon’s goal, as he often explained to Stein and others on his staff, was to create “a generation of peace.” And Stein argues he did it; Nixon gave the United States the longest sustained period of peace since World War II. In Stein’s view, if we no longer have to fear Russian ICBMs screaming out of hell to start nuclear war, we can thank the shade of Richard Nixon.

Why did the media hate him so much? Stein argues it was because Nixon was vulnerable and showed it when attacked. He did not have the tough hide of a Reagan or an Obama. Like the schoolyard bullies they are, the media went after Nixon for his vulnerability.

An insider’s account of Nixon the man, president and peacemaker, The Peacemaker: Nixon: The Man, President and My Friend will make you reconsider the life and legacy of 37th President of the United States.

“This book is a moving, deeply personal chronicle of the friendship that grew between Ben, the sorcerer’s apprentice, and Richard Nixon, first as a brilliant statesman at the pinnacle of power and then as a brooding sorcerer-in-exile, still surveying the world with a masterful gazeIt is also a treasure trove of Nixon quotes, quips, and candid insights, all painstakingly assembled and shared by Ben over the course of years of intimate conversations. It’s no exaggeration to say that what James Boswell was to Dr. Samuel Johnson, Ben Stein was to Richard Nixon: a confidant whose eyes and ears have captured a great man, close up, unvarnished, and endlessly alive in a way no other writer has. There is more of the real Richard Nixon in the pages of this modest memoir than in all the scholarly tomes—and shoddy, mainstream journalism—that fill the shelves of most university libraries. For all their differences, Ben Stein and Richard Nixon emerge from these pages as kindred spirits: men to whom success did not come easily but through faith, determination, and the guts to try, try, and try again, no matter how bruising the ordeal. In the end, both succeeded. And this book offers a key to appreciating the incredible nature of that success: a monument to friendship, endurance, and ultimate vindication.” 

 —  from the Foreword by Aram Bakshian Jr., aide and speechwriter to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, editor-in-chief of The American Speaker, and author of The Candidates 1980: A Professional Handicaps the Presidential Derby

“Writer, economist, pundit, entertainer, friend—Ben Stein is a man of many parts, all of them admirable. But perhaps most admirable is his undying loyalty to one of the most unjustly maligned presidents in American history—a president of great accomplishments who was betrayed, sold out, and railroaded into resigning his presidency. Ben Stein’s deeply felt and evocative THE PEACEMAKER, written with passion and conviction, represents a significant step in redeeming the reputation of one of our great presidents, Richard M. Nixon.” 

— from the Prologue by John R. Coyne Jr., speechwriter to President Nixon and author of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement

Ben Stein is the most famous economics teacher in America. His comedic role as the droning economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is by far the most widely viewed scene of economics teaching in economics history and has been ranked as one of the fifty most famous scenes in movie history. But in real life, Ben Stein is a powerful thinkers on economics, politics, education and history and motivation – and like his father, Herbert Stein, considered one of the great humorists on political economy and how life works in this nation. 

Stein in real life has a bachelor's with honors in economics from Columbia, studied economics at the graduate level at Yale, is a graduate of Yale Law School ( valedictorian of his class by election of his classmates in 1970), and has as diverse a resume as any man in America. 

His background includes...poverty lawyer for poor people in New Haven, trade regulation lawyer for the FTC, speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford, columnist and editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, columnist for The New York Times, teacher about law and economics at UC, Santa Cruz and Pepperdine. Stein was the 2009 winner of the Malcolm Forbes Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism. Stein was the co-host, along with Jimmy Kimmel, of the pathbreaking Comedy Central game show, Win Ben Stein's Money, which won seven Emmys, including ones for Ben and Jimmy for best game show host(s); surely making him the only well-known economist to win an Emmy. Presently, he writes a column for The American Spectator and NewsMax, and is a regular commentator on Fox News, CNN, Newsmax TV and on CBS Sunday Morning. Stein has written or co-written roughly 30 books, mostly about investing, many of them New York Times bestsellers, including: The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich and The World According to Ben Stein: Wit, Wisdom & Even More Wit. He lives and works in the Los Angeles metro area.

https://www.mrbenstein.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheWorldAccordingToBenStein/featured

https://www.newsmax.com/insiders/benstein/bio-39/