re: #142 scottslemmons

Speaking of former Republican presidents, y’all want a book recommendation?

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“Crooked” by Austin Grossman. Elevator pitch: Why was Nixon so horrible? He was doing what he had to in order to defend the world from eldritch Cthulhoid horrors from other dimensions!

Told first-person from Nixon’s perspective, and even then, it’s not a constant stream of “I’m a hero, I’m so great!” This Nixon is very well aware he’s got something broken inside him. He wants to be a decent, noble, respected statesman, but his first instinct when it comes to campaigning is to be a bastard.

The story gets into the meat of the plot when Rep. Nixon decides to trail Alger Hiss after his testimony and ends up ensnared in an attempt to foil an interdimensional incursion with a couple Russians — and ends up working for the Russians as a double agent, discovering the secret military projects to harness magical energy. From there, he becomes the VP for Eisenhower, who is, hands down, the most terrifying character in the book, just from the glimpses we get of his sorcerous badassery.

All that’s before Nixon’s in the White House, before we find out about the secret Oval Office in the Oval Office, before we find out about the protective spells woven into the text of the Constitution, before we find out what Kissinger really is.

It’s a fun book, dryly humorous, not particularly scary most of the time, even considering the Lovecraftian bits that show up here and there. If Austin Grossman’s name seems familiar to you, he’s the twin brother of Lev Grossman, author of “The Magicians.” He also wrote “Soon I Will Be Invincible,” one of the great modern superhero novels.

EDIT: Do Instagram embeds not work anymore? Or am I the only person not seeing the image toward the top of this?

in the end i kind of like nixon, really. he just worked so hard and so sincerely that he missed out on being a human being and ended up being a cynical lying paranoid bastard