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alexpriest's review against another edition
5.0
I learned so much in this book. A brisk, fascinating walk through the life of a painful but critical American figure. This really unlocked the world of presidential biographies for me—now I’m eager for more.
jake_wont_shut_up's review against another edition
5.0
Who would've thought I'd end up feeling bad for Nixon? He certainly deserved what happened to him, but he was hardly the first President to aggressively abuse his power. If he'd held to those Quaker morals just a little better, he could've made a case for being the greatest president ever. Instead, his anxiety and paranoia pushed him over the edge. He really is his own Greek tragedy.
scribepub's review against another edition
Farrell’s blockbuster portrait of Nixon is revelatory — filled with fresh reporting shedding new light on the roots of our own dark political moment. He shows that dirty tricks, October Surprises, and anti-elitist resentment were among the gifts Nixon bequeathed to our own presidential politics.
Jane Mayer, Author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of The Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.
John A. Farrell has once again delivered a rich, precisely written portrait of the past to help us understand the present. He traces the origins and turning points of one of the most complex, complicated and fascinating presidents of the modern age with flair and narrative skill. Each page is a joy to read, on the way to a very satisfying whole.
John Dickerson, Moderator of CBS’s Face the Nation and Author of Whistletop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campagin History.
John A. Farrell's Richard Nixon: the life is an expertly written and strikingly comprehensive portrait of America's most complicated president. Farrell has a genius for the telling anecdote and apropos quote. His command of the sources is staggering. Richard Nixon is a true landmark achievement.
Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and Author of Cronkite
Written with skills he acquired as an investigative reporter, John Farrell’s tour de force takes us through the rise and fall of Richard Nixon with penetrating and thought-provoking analysis.
Irwin Gellman, Author of The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952 and The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961.
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.
Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
[A] wonderful biography of America’s most controversial 20th-century president … a sharply observed but refreshingly uncensorious assessment.
New Statesman
A probing biography … Readers track the lonely and hard-won ascent of a sickly, love-starved child, who dreams like a Romantic but manoeuvres like Machiavelli … An unflinching portrait.
Booklist, Starred Review
Brilliant, ruthless, a president who combined some enlightened policies with inner darkness, Richard Nixon stands alone in the history of American politics. John A. Farrell’s gripping account vividly captures Nixon from his earliest days — catapulting to Congress with a cold-blooded debate stunt — to the mounting crises he faced in the White House, culminating in his spectacular fall.
T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Custer’s Trials and The First Tycoon
Richard Nixon’s political career has all the nooks and crannies of an English muffin: the red-baiting of the early campaigns; Checkers; the Great Debates of 1960; the comeback in ’68; the inheritance and horror of Vietnam; the historic opening to China; the shame of Watergate. In Richard Nixon, John A. Farrell is tough and unyielding, yet gives his subject a fair hearing through each gripping episode. ‘I’m not a quitter,’ Nixon once protested, and this grand, indispensable book proves him right, right to the end.
Chris Matthews, Author of Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Post-War America
Jack Farrell gives us two profoundly resonant Richard Nixons — the last progressive Republican, and the author of our national divisions. He also gives us, in one engrossing volume, the defining biography of our darkest president.
Larry Tye, Author of Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon
With clarity and verve, John A. Farrell’s deft pen illuminates the life of America’s 37th president. Unsparing yet fair-minded in its analysis and based on deep research in a wealth of archival and published sources, Richard Nixon is a fast-moving and penetrating portrait of this controversial and complicated man.
Frederik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Embers of War
A stack of good books about Nixon could reach the ceiling, but Farrell has written the best one-volume, cradle-to-grave biography that we could expect about such a famously elusive subject. By employing recently released government documents and oral histories, he adds layers of understanding to a complex man and his dastardly decisions … Richard Nixon illuminates a man of sharp mind and soaring ambition. Farrell sympathises with a boy who thought he was hard to love and compensated with an iron will. He understands Nixon’s frustrations with the lack of respect for his accomplishments. But in the end, this portrait is more damning. His Nixon is doomed by his own insecurities, destroyed by his own treachery, damned by his own words … [Nixon] stained his reputation and that of the presidency. As Farrell’s outstanding biography reminds us, the consequences have endured.
Aram Goudsouzian, Washington Post
An extremely valuable introduction to the life and times of one of our most consequential presidents. Farrell gives us a Nixon rich in both character flaws and great accomplishments, the latter fueled by his transformational vision. It’s a worthy look at a fascinating president.
Ray Locker, USA Today
Though there have been many previous books about Nixon, Mr. Farrell’s comprehensive, one-volume biography is welcome … In lively, vigorous prose, he takes readers through Nixon’s career, offering incisive judgments and revealing details along the way.
Robert K Landers, Wall Street Journal
[Nixon is] an electrifying subject, a muttering Lear, of perennial interest to anyone with even an average curiosity about politics or psychology. The real test of a good Nixon biography, given how many there are, is far simpler: Is it elegantly written? And, even more important, can it tolerate paradoxes and complexity, the spikier stuff that distinguishes real-life sinners from comic-book villains? The answer, in the case of Richard Nixon, is yes, on both counts.
Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
Superb … the most formidable attempt yet made to put Richard Nixon in perspective.
Steve Donaghue, Christian Science Monitor
Farrell has written a definitive biography. There was a lot more to Nixon than lies and bombast, and this nuanced book shows that.
Harold Evans, The Week
Beautifully written and deeply insightful … A bracing portrait of a man untethered from principle and ideology, driven throughout his life to win at any cost and thereby palliate his deep-seated insecurities … Nixon was not an easy man to understand. And even now, his failures and accomplishments are not easy to classify. In Farrell’s capable hands, however, we see Nixon in his entirety — and we can’t help but wonder what he means for our politics today.
William Howell, San Francisco Chronicle
John Farrell’s book now clearly stands as the best one-volume life of one of the century’s most complex and compelling figures. It is a story that goes from bright promise into dark places, time and again punctures the lie that there are no second acts in American lives, but still exits into tragedy. It is one of the saddest biographies you will ever read.
The Herald
Prodigiously sourced and insightful … [an] important and revealing biography.
Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator
John A Farrell convincingly argues with great style and attention to detail.
JP O’Malley, Sunday Independent
[A] highly readable tome.
Peter Coaldrake, Vice-Chancellor and President, Queensland University of Technology
A magisterial portrait of the man who embodied post-war American political cynicism — and was destroyed by it.
Irish Examiner
[Farrell] humanizes him with genuine empathy, but clearly demonstrates that Nixon’s ultimate demise was the result of the deceit and corruption that he recklessly cultivated over decades.
Irish Examiner
An excellent book, thoughtful in approach, original in research, crisp in prose and definitive in conclusions.
Weekend Australian
Jane Mayer, Author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of The Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.
John A. Farrell has once again delivered a rich, precisely written portrait of the past to help us understand the present. He traces the origins and turning points of one of the most complex, complicated and fascinating presidents of the modern age with flair and narrative skill. Each page is a joy to read, on the way to a very satisfying whole.
John Dickerson, Moderator of CBS’s Face the Nation and Author of Whistletop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campagin History.
John A. Farrell's Richard Nixon: the life is an expertly written and strikingly comprehensive portrait of America's most complicated president. Farrell has a genius for the telling anecdote and apropos quote. His command of the sources is staggering. Richard Nixon is a true landmark achievement.
Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and Author of Cronkite
Written with skills he acquired as an investigative reporter, John Farrell’s tour de force takes us through the rise and fall of Richard Nixon with penetrating and thought-provoking analysis.
Irwin Gellman, Author of The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952 and The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961.
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.
Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
[A] wonderful biography of America’s most controversial 20th-century president … a sharply observed but refreshingly uncensorious assessment.
New Statesman
A probing biography … Readers track the lonely and hard-won ascent of a sickly, love-starved child, who dreams like a Romantic but manoeuvres like Machiavelli … An unflinching portrait.
Booklist, Starred Review
Brilliant, ruthless, a president who combined some enlightened policies with inner darkness, Richard Nixon stands alone in the history of American politics. John A. Farrell’s gripping account vividly captures Nixon from his earliest days — catapulting to Congress with a cold-blooded debate stunt — to the mounting crises he faced in the White House, culminating in his spectacular fall.
T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Custer’s Trials and The First Tycoon
Richard Nixon’s political career has all the nooks and crannies of an English muffin: the red-baiting of the early campaigns; Checkers; the Great Debates of 1960; the comeback in ’68; the inheritance and horror of Vietnam; the historic opening to China; the shame of Watergate. In Richard Nixon, John A. Farrell is tough and unyielding, yet gives his subject a fair hearing through each gripping episode. ‘I’m not a quitter,’ Nixon once protested, and this grand, indispensable book proves him right, right to the end.
Chris Matthews, Author of Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Post-War America
Jack Farrell gives us two profoundly resonant Richard Nixons — the last progressive Republican, and the author of our national divisions. He also gives us, in one engrossing volume, the defining biography of our darkest president.
Larry Tye, Author of Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon
With clarity and verve, John A. Farrell’s deft pen illuminates the life of America’s 37th president. Unsparing yet fair-minded in its analysis and based on deep research in a wealth of archival and published sources, Richard Nixon is a fast-moving and penetrating portrait of this controversial and complicated man.
Frederik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Embers of War
A stack of good books about Nixon could reach the ceiling, but Farrell has written the best one-volume, cradle-to-grave biography that we could expect about such a famously elusive subject. By employing recently released government documents and oral histories, he adds layers of understanding to a complex man and his dastardly decisions … Richard Nixon illuminates a man of sharp mind and soaring ambition. Farrell sympathises with a boy who thought he was hard to love and compensated with an iron will. He understands Nixon’s frustrations with the lack of respect for his accomplishments. But in the end, this portrait is more damning. His Nixon is doomed by his own insecurities, destroyed by his own treachery, damned by his own words … [Nixon] stained his reputation and that of the presidency. As Farrell’s outstanding biography reminds us, the consequences have endured.
Aram Goudsouzian, Washington Post
An extremely valuable introduction to the life and times of one of our most consequential presidents. Farrell gives us a Nixon rich in both character flaws and great accomplishments, the latter fueled by his transformational vision. It’s a worthy look at a fascinating president.
Ray Locker, USA Today
Though there have been many previous books about Nixon, Mr. Farrell’s comprehensive, one-volume biography is welcome … In lively, vigorous prose, he takes readers through Nixon’s career, offering incisive judgments and revealing details along the way.
Robert K Landers, Wall Street Journal
[Nixon is] an electrifying subject, a muttering Lear, of perennial interest to anyone with even an average curiosity about politics or psychology. The real test of a good Nixon biography, given how many there are, is far simpler: Is it elegantly written? And, even more important, can it tolerate paradoxes and complexity, the spikier stuff that distinguishes real-life sinners from comic-book villains? The answer, in the case of Richard Nixon, is yes, on both counts.
Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
Superb … the most formidable attempt yet made to put Richard Nixon in perspective.
Steve Donaghue, Christian Science Monitor
Farrell has written a definitive biography. There was a lot more to Nixon than lies and bombast, and this nuanced book shows that.
Harold Evans, The Week
Beautifully written and deeply insightful … A bracing portrait of a man untethered from principle and ideology, driven throughout his life to win at any cost and thereby palliate his deep-seated insecurities … Nixon was not an easy man to understand. And even now, his failures and accomplishments are not easy to classify. In Farrell’s capable hands, however, we see Nixon in his entirety — and we can’t help but wonder what he means for our politics today.
William Howell, San Francisco Chronicle
John Farrell’s book now clearly stands as the best one-volume life of one of the century’s most complex and compelling figures. It is a story that goes from bright promise into dark places, time and again punctures the lie that there are no second acts in American lives, but still exits into tragedy. It is one of the saddest biographies you will ever read.
The Herald
Prodigiously sourced and insightful … [an] important and revealing biography.
Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator
John A Farrell convincingly argues with great style and attention to detail.
JP O’Malley, Sunday Independent
[A] highly readable tome.
Peter Coaldrake, Vice-Chancellor and President, Queensland University of Technology
A magisterial portrait of the man who embodied post-war American political cynicism — and was destroyed by it.
Irish Examiner
[Farrell] humanizes him with genuine empathy, but clearly demonstrates that Nixon’s ultimate demise was the result of the deceit and corruption that he recklessly cultivated over decades.
Irish Examiner
An excellent book, thoughtful in approach, original in research, crisp in prose and definitive in conclusions.
Weekend Australian
amarj33t_5ingh's review against another edition
5.0
The sun of a thousand virtues can be cloaked by one night of vice
And thus it was with Robert Nixon, the 37th President of the United States and the only president ever to resign from his office.
Farrell's virtue, in this book, lies in his crafting of a very endearing biography of Robert Nixon while also factually portraying his notoriously premier role in the Watergate Scandal which brought about his downfall. He charts Nixon's early poverty-stricken years; his military service and meteoric rise as Congress elect and budding Senator during the McCarthy era.
The reader is treated to a frontline seat as Nixon clinches the Vice Presidency from Eisenhower; almost forfeits it and then fights to retain it as well as his absolution in the form of his leading the Republicans to victory post-Kennedy.
Then, Farrell takes a dark turn and logically so. Based on primary material we witness the real Nixon. The groundbreaking statesman who forces Russia to a treaty and re-introduces isolationist China to the world but also a deeply suspicious and vitriolic man intoxicated by the power bequeathed to him. We journey to the dizzying heights of the Watergate edifice which has Nixon's insecurities about journalists and opponents in full glare; his over-excessive reaction to the Pentagon Papers scandal and his obfuscation of himself with the powers of an executive until he recognizes no limit to himself. Statesman but also an insecure human being with profound sadness permeating his life-Farrell makes a convincing case for the fact that had it not been for his missteps in his reaction to Watergate leaking, Nixon would today have been invoked as one of the USA's finest Presidents.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Farrell's narration of Nixon's life which is laced with considerable wit. It does not detract from Nixon as a warm human and neither does it pillory him for Watergate. Rather, it leaves that ultimate decision to the reader. I confess that I did not put this book down until bedtime. A mesmerizing and memorable read with considerably important lessons for all of us today.
And thus it was with Robert Nixon, the 37th President of the United States and the only president ever to resign from his office.
Farrell's virtue, in this book, lies in his crafting of a very endearing biography of Robert Nixon while also factually portraying his notoriously premier role in the Watergate Scandal which brought about his downfall. He charts Nixon's early poverty-stricken years; his military service and meteoric rise as Congress elect and budding Senator during the McCarthy era.
The reader is treated to a frontline seat as Nixon clinches the Vice Presidency from Eisenhower; almost forfeits it and then fights to retain it as well as his absolution in the form of his leading the Republicans to victory post-Kennedy.
Then, Farrell takes a dark turn and logically so. Based on primary material we witness the real Nixon. The groundbreaking statesman who forces Russia to a treaty and re-introduces isolationist China to the world but also a deeply suspicious and vitriolic man intoxicated by the power bequeathed to him. We journey to the dizzying heights of the Watergate edifice which has Nixon's insecurities about journalists and opponents in full glare; his over-excessive reaction to the Pentagon Papers scandal and his obfuscation of himself with the powers of an executive until he recognizes no limit to himself. Statesman but also an insecure human being with profound sadness permeating his life-Farrell makes a convincing case for the fact that had it not been for his missteps in his reaction to Watergate leaking, Nixon would today have been invoked as one of the USA's finest Presidents.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Farrell's narration of Nixon's life which is laced with considerable wit. It does not detract from Nixon as a warm human and neither does it pillory him for Watergate. Rather, it leaves that ultimate decision to the reader. I confess that I did not put this book down until bedtime. A mesmerizing and memorable read with considerably important lessons for all of us today.
bird_smuggler's review against another edition
5.0
I think one could properly call this, if not the pinnacle of Nixon biographies, an approximation. Everything you will want is here, with plenty of information, some rational analysis, a mostly neutral tone that examines the man's folly and his prudence; the contrasting character traits of one of the most reviled men in American political canon, he who set the trends that would go on to consume us through the present era. A truly impeccable work and a pleasure to read - insofar as anything about Nixon can be a pleasure to read.