During the last four years  of Richard Nixon's life, Monica Crowley served as his foreign-policy assistant and political confidante--a trusted member of the small circle of advisors with whom he shared hours of daily one-on-one conversations. This is the remarkable story of the final public and private years of the thirty-seventh president, based on full reconstructions of the conversations Crowley had with him at the time.   Nixon in Winter puts the reader behind the scenes with the former president, allowing a unique glimpse into his life as elder statesman and private citizen.  It is filled with dramatic revelations about Nixon's influential role on the world stage, whether taking action himself to guide American foreign policy or whispering advice to his successors.  His hardheaded views on the end of the cold war, his emotional final trip to China, his powerful inside role during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and his poignant thoughts on the legacy of Vietnam are recounted--as well as his frustrations with being out of power and with foreign-policy failures of Presidents Bush and Clinton. With astonishing candor, Nixon also shares his final, startling thoughts on Watergate, including his assessments of all the major players in the scandal and what he would--and would not--have done differently.  And he offers an uncompromising look at the way the sexual scandals surrounding the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Packwood have changed the politics of scandal. Above all, he reveals a more private self than ever before as he reflects on his faith and his family, copes with the death of Mrs. Nixon, and struggles to deal with aging and the only force that could ultimately destroy him: death. Nixon in Winter is the inside story of his last years.  It is an unprecedented firsthand portrait, private, provocative, and candid.