Michael Dobbs: author of King Richard

Michael Dobbs is the author of King Richard an American Tragedy. Within the field of presidential historians, his specialty is presidential crisis history. 

In the cover photo, he is pictured as a young 7 year old boy with his Mother and brother in the grounds of the British Embassy overlooking the Kremlin in Moscow.  His diplomat parents first took him to Moscow when he was six weeks old during the height of the Cold War.

His parents were diplomats assigned to the British Embassy. He spent much of his formative years living behind the Iron  Curtain, albeit as the child of diplomats. 

His career as a journalist began with a series of assignments in Eastern Europe covering the collapse of the Soviet bloc during the waning days behind the Iron Curtain. In 1980 he was the first western journalist to enter the Lenin Shipyards st Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently he moved onto Yugoslavia in the waning days of Tito and later covered the fall of Romanian dictator Ceausescu. 

Hired as the Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, he was present at the Russian Duma when Yeltsin stood atop a Soviet tank to proclaim the end of the USSR. ( he is visible in the yellow circle )

Truly a witness to History, he was on hand for many of the key transitional events marking the end of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the USSR.

The author of seven books, his specialty is presidential crisis history: FDR, Truman, JFK and Nixon.  But Nixon’s crisis - presciently Nixon’s book Six Crises seized on the term - his crisis that brought his presidency to an end, was due to fatal character flaws, not great geopolitical conflict.

In Wednesday’s podcast, October 6, I will interview Michael Dobbs about his fascinating, unique career, and discuss his book about Richard Nixon, or King Richard.