Poi­son­ing the Press recounts the bit­ter quar­ter-cen­tu­ry bat­tle between the post­war era’s most con­tentious politi­cian and its most reviled news­man. The strug­gle between Richard Nixon and Jack Ander­son includ­ed bribery, black­mail, bur­glary, spy­ing, and sex­u­al smears — even a White House plot to assas­si­nate Ander­son. In this riv­et­ing, real-life polit­i­cal dra­ma, Mark Feld­stein traces the arc of this con­fronta­tion between a vin­dic­tive pres­i­dent and a flam­boy­ant­ly cru­sad­ing muck­rak­er. Their vendet­ta at once sym­bol­ized and accel­er­at­ed the grow­ing con­flict between the gov­ern­ment and the press, a clash that would long out­live both men. Bril­liant, cap­ti­vat­ing, and dark­ly comedic, Poi­son­ing the Press is ​“an absolute­ly essen­tial book for any­one inter­est­ed in Amer­i­can polit­i­cal his­to­ry” (NPR).