Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation is a book about the success of a man considered as an American hero who opined that not even the president was higher than the law.

In October 1973, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was tracking the Watergate conspiracy to the Oval Office. This prompted United States president Nixon to demand Cox to stop. In the “Saturday Night Massacre,” two Justice Department leaders resigned before Nixon found a subordinate (Robert Bork), to fire Cox. Public opinion instantly swung in opposition to the former president and made Cox a hero.

In the book, Ken Gormley describes in detail the power struggle between the Oval Office and the Justice Department over ex-president Nixon’s tapes, which resulted to unreleased documents and interviews with chief participants.

Archibald Cox had a notable career even before the event. In fact, he had served as a clerk for the famous Judge Learned Hand, one of the respected professors at Harvard Law, and the Solicitor General who defended several Supreme Court cases.

Not only is this book a revisit of Watergate, but it also spans the remarkable career of a model attorney, from his early days expanding to his service at the Wage Stabilization Committee, to the Common Cause and, of course, to Watergate.

Cox is an example of what real lawyers need to be. This is a story of a Yankee who traveled to Washington and yet refused to abandon his principles. In a time when special prosecutors had turned into common fixtures in controversial issues, Ken Gormley’s biography of one of the most well-known lawyers in his era shows how he set out to deliver his responsibilities of the office with utmost integrity and style that had led the nation to gather on his side.