Episode 418 THE GREAT AMERICAN AUTHORS (Part 16) SPIRO T AGNEW and THE NIXON NOVELS : "The Canfield Decision " and JOHN EHRLICHMAN'S "The Company"

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In this episode of Great American Authors, we take an unforgettable look at two astonishing works born from the tumultuous aftermath of Nixon-era Washington — The Canfield Decision by Spiro T. Agnew and The Company by John Ehrlichman.

Today, The Canfield Decision enjoys a surprisingly warm reception online, with roughly 87% of readers awarding it three to five stars on Goodreads and similar platforms. But that wasn’t always the case. Upon its release, critics and much of the media savaged the book, dismissing it as thinly veiled political wish-fulfillment from a disgraced Vice President. We unpack the striking discrepancy between that early panning and the thoughtful, often affectionate audience it’s gained in recent years — readers who find nuance, ambition, or just plain fun in a novel penned by a man few expected to ever write fiction.

We place the book in the context of Agnew’s political fall from grace. Once the second-in-command in the nation, Agnew’s public resignation and subsequent legal troubles left him a pariah. Remarkably, The Canfield Decision became his first major step back onto the national stage — a work that speaks volumes about ambition, image, and reinvention. What did Agnew hope to say with this book? And why do modern readers connect with it in ways early reviewers didn’t anticipate?

From there, we pivot to another Nixon-era insider turned novelist: John Ehrlichman, author of The Company. A former aide to Richard Nixon and one of the central figures of Watergate, Ehrlichman wrote a sprawling fictional chronicle of power, corruption, and betrayal in America’s secretive intelligence community. Unlike Agnew’s quietly redemptive tone, Ehrlichman’s The Company bristles with bitterness toward the very system he once served — especially toward Nixon himself.

We explore the reviews then and now for The Company, and how Ehrlichman’s own disillusionment shaped a narrative that many readers and critics call prophetic, sprawling, and ethically complex. As we compare and contrast these two presidential novels, we also ask: what happens when real political trauma is transmuted into fiction? What does each author reveal about themselves — and about American power — in the act of storytelling?

Join us for a deep, insightful, and sometimes surprising conversation about politics, prose, reputation, and the curious afterlives of The Canfield Decision and The Company — two books that defy expectations and challenge how we think about presidential literature.

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