Kutler to speak on liberating the Nixon tapes

Well-known presidential scholar Stanley Kutler will give a talk, “Liberating the Nixon Tapes and Other Encounters,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in the Alumni Lounge of the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St.

Kutler, the E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions and professor of law at UW–Madison, will focus on his adventures with the Freedom of Information Act and his lawsuit to force the National Archives and Richard Nixon to release the president’s tape recordings.

He is perhaps best known as the author of “Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes” and writer in a wide number of fields of American history, particularly concentrating on American constitutional history and the twentieth century.

His books include “The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon”; “The American Inquisition,” winner of the Silver Gavel Award, American Bar Association, 1983; “Privilege and Creative Destruction: The Charles River Bridge Case”; and “Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics.”

In addition, he has authored or edited a half-dozen textbooks in various fields of American history. His scholarly articles have appeared in leading history and legal periodicals.

Most recently, he has edited the four-volume work, “Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century America,” awarded the prize for the best reference work by the Association of Book Publishers, and “The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War.”

Currently, he is editing the revision of the Dictionary of American History, a 10-volume work. His Nixon books are being adapted for a Broadway play, to be produced by Metropolitan Entertainment.