In July 1973, for the first time in its history, the New York Times Magazine devoted a full issue to a single article: Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas’s account of the Watergate story to date. Six months later, a second installment ran in another full issue.

In July 1973, for the first time in its history, the New York Times Magazine devoted a full issue to a single article: Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas’s account of the Watergate story to date. Six months later, a second installment ran in another full issue. Later the Times asked him to write a third issue, on the impeachment, which never appeared because of Nixon’s intervening resignation. But all of Lukas’s painstaking reporting on Nixon’s last months in office appears here, along with added information on every aspect of Watergate.
Widely acclaimed as a major text of the Watergate saga, J. Anthony Lukas’s Nightmare is a masterwork of investigation, highlighted by in-depth character sketches of the key players. For students of history coming to these events for the first time, this book reveals in depth the particular trauma of a nation in turmoil; for those who remember, the upheaval and what was at stake are once more brought to life.

"“That the facts about Watergate are now as straight as they are, in spite of all official attempts to conceal them, is a tribute to Lukas's skill as a reporter and more broadly to the journalistic tradition he represents.”" - New York Times Book Review

"“Highly recommended for those with an insatiable fascination for the Watergate story. The author … shuns grandiloquent probing for deeper meanings while providing an almost minute-by-minute account of a cast of hundreds, interspersed with concise biographical vignettes.”" - Foreign Affairs

"“[A] model of measured judgment and of careful selection and synthesis … it is presented with such masterly narrative skill that one reads the old familiar story as if it were all new and fresh.”" - Publishers Weekly