"In the fall of 1971, when William Rehnquist was nominated to fill an associate justice seat on the Supreme Court, the Senate raised no major objections, and a little-known assistant attorney general suddenly found himself at the pinnacle of the judiciary.

It seemed, at the time, a straightforward choice of a relatively young, academically outstanding, and politically seasoned lawyer who shared Richard Nixon's philosophy of "strict constructionism." In fact, as Nixon's White House counsel John Dean reveals here for the first time, the choice was anything but straightforward. The behind-the-scenes truth is that Rehnquist's nomination was the result of a dramatic and very Nixonian rollercoaster.

Rehnquist was a last-minute substitution, an unlikely longshot who had once been dismissed by Nixon as a "clown." Only John Dean - who was Rehnquist's champion at the time - knows the full, improbable story."--BOOK JACKET.