Starred review from February 27, 2017
Journalist and biographer Farrell (Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned) skillfully revisits Richard Nixon’s long political career, in this history of American politics from the postwar period through his resignation as president in 1974. Farrell, an exceptional writer, examines minor anecdotes and Nixon’s world-altering choices to illuminate his fundamental and contradictory qualities: a mixture of intelligence, ambition, insecurity, paranoia, and deviousness, all put in service to great success and catastrophic failure. Farrell reveals how these traits drove Nixon in his early days as a young red-baiting California senator, his year as vice president, his failed 1960 Presidential candidacy, his phoenix-like 1968 resurrection, and his final devolution to a paranoid figurehead beset by demons. Nixon’s life is a cornucopia of controversy replete with dramatic moments, including his famous 1952 Checkers speech, and such history-changing events as the 1972 SALT treaty with the U.S.S.R., détente with China, his conspiracy to frustrate President Johnson’s Vietnam peace initiatives, the 1973 Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam War, and, of course, Watergate. It may not have been Farrell’s intent to produce a cautionary tale about the dangers of a presidency run aground on lies, paranoia, prejudices, and delusion, but that’s what he’s accomplished. Farrell makes the most of his material to offer insights and well-considered opinions about each of these historic events. Agent: David Black, David Black Agency.
Starred review from January 15, 2017
A sturdy study of the man ranked at the bottom of many historians' lists of presidents.Richard Nixon (1913-1994) was nothing if not complicated. As journalist and biographer Farrell (Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, 2011, etc.) observes, he defied all expectations by ordering the foundation of the Environmental Protection Agency and promulgating numerous pieces of related legislation that today have earned him second place only to Theodore Roosevelt on the environmentalists' thumbs-up roster of Republican presidents. Yet he also "vetoed the Clean Water Act, which he claimed was too costly." Congress overrode him, yet even today Nixon is given credit for that law. He has been so well-studied that Farrell cannot help but cover familiar ground, and so he does: for instance, the ugly conduct of the red-baiting campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, of course, and the spectacularly fraught 1960 presidential race against John F. Kennedy. Yet there and elsewhere, Farrell teases lesser-known matters into view. Nixon blamed the Republican establishment for his loss in the latter race, for instance, but insightfully so, saying that the party had failed to gain the high ground in matters of civil rights. "I could have become president," he said. "I needed only 5 percent more votes in the Negro areas." That they failed to deliver was but one more betrayal, and though the author doesn't go deep into psychobiography, he cannot help but note that Nixon was a sensitive man with a long memory for slights, as when Dwight Eisenhower suggested that he be not vice president but a Cabinet member in his second term. That is one of many news items that Farrell offers, from a fascinating aside on how it was Gerald Ford who replaced Spiro Agnew to how the taping system that brought Nixon down came to be discovered in the first place.Full of fresh, endlessly revealing insights into Nixon's political career, less on the matter of his character, refreshingly, than on the events that accompanied and resulted from it.
COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from February 1, 2017
Journalist (Denver Post, Boston Globe) and author (Clarence Darrow) Farrell presents an unapologetic yet nuanced assessment of the life and legacy of the perpetually controversial and fascinating politician Richard Nixon (1913-94). In Farrell's view, Nixon's presidency shaped the current U.S. political scene. By turns intellectually curious, driven, contradictory (an introvert in an extrovert's profession), and often resentful of established elites and experts, Nixon paradoxically employed these experts to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals while also attracting ardent adherents who envisioned him as a spokesman for middle America. Farrell diverges from, yet acknowledges, more positive takes on Nixon than offered in Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full and Erwin Gellman's The President and the Apprentice. The author utilizes archives and personal interviews with Nixon's colleagues to document how the former president championed and heralded Republican populism, often denouncing reporters and reaching out directly to potential voters. Arguably the right man at the right time, equipped to mold his country's narrative, Nixon's odyssey and motivations still highlight America's conflicted character. VERDICT Essential for general students of 20th-century history and biography as well as scholars.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from January 1, 2017
Impressed in 1958 by the magnetic personality of the rising politician Richard Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr., nonetheless worries that hidden personal defects might make Nixon the most dangerous man in America. In this probing biography, Farrell illuminates both what King admires in Nixon and what he fears. Readers track the lonely and hard-won ascent of a sickly, love-starved child, who dreams like a Romantic but maneuvers like Machiavelli. Tapping into ordinary Americans' resentment against elite figures such as Alger Hiss, Nixon skyrockets to the political summit. Farrell credits Nixon with translating his political success into support for the Marshall Plan, key civil rights protections for African Americans, and international ties with China. But behind this laudable legacy, Farrell discerns a politician haunted by personal insecurity, even paranoia, that ultimately motivates him to create the Plumbers, the dirty-tricks unit whose Watergate break-in results in a failed cover-up and an inglorious end to his presidency. But the worse offense occurs well before Watergate: Farrell reveals that Nixon tries to enhance his 1968 electoral prospects by covertlyand perfidiouslyinterfering in the Johnson Administration's peace talks with North Vietnam, so ironically ensuring that he is saddled as president with a war he cannot honorably end. An unflinching portrait.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)