Reviews

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell

weejane's review against another edition

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4.0

This was an incredibly sympathetic biography of Nixon, but fair. It pointed out his flaws but also portrayed him as a tragic figure. Based on other reading I've done, I'm not sure he's as blameless for Watergate as the author makes it sounds.

valerieellen's review against another edition

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5.0

Absolutely fascinating look at a complicated man and presidency.

dennisdiehl's review against another edition

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4.0

Four and a half stars.

rhonaea's review against another edition

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5.0

The talent of a gifted biographer is not just interpreting the character and actions of their subject and adding the perspective of history but bestowing on the reader an effortless walk hand in hand through life and times. John A Farrell could hardly have a more divisive and intriguing subject than Richard Milhous Nixon and he ably charted HUAC, Hiss, Eisenhower, Vietnam, civil rights, peace rallies, corruption, Kennedy, SALT, Soviet, Middle East, Yom Kippur War, China and Watergate. An excellent read.

booksuperpower's review against another edition

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5.0

Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell is a 2017 Doubleday publication.

There is no shortage of books written about Nixon, with Nixon himself having written several books, published as memoirs. So, with all that material floating around, why do we need another book about Nixon, and why now?


Well, first, I think having a Nixon biography published in one book, as opposed to, say, Stephen Ambrose’s chronicles of Nixon’s life, published in three volumes, makes this biography a terrific choice. It’s enormous, with nearly eight hundred pages, but it is a very polished publication, that can be enjoyed by anyone, whether you are a novice or an aficionado.



Secondly, this book is a very comprehensive biography that does not allow Watergate to define it, so it’s not a rehash of the same old material over one period in Nixon’s life, which has been analyzed to death already, although it is covered very succinctly here.

Third, this is a new release, which means material unavailable previously, like in Ambrose’s case, has now been released, which gives us a fresh perspective on Nixon’s life.

Last, but not least, is the timing of this book’s release and the parallels to our current political climate and the nation’s polarization, which is hard to ignore.


The author has done an amazing job with this book. It’s so well organized, with some incredibly powerful passages, and covers the entirety of Nixon’s life, and lays out his slow transformation over the years, showing how, when, where and why he became the type of person and the type of leader he was.

Here are few of my musings, quotes and impressions, in no particular order:

“This Administration is going to turn away from… offbeat art, music, and literature. (Sounds eerily familiar, no?)

It wasn’t ALL Bad:

Nixon saw that an equal amount of funding went into women’s athletics.

He ended the draft, approved the lowering of the voting age, and had a surprising health care plan, which also looked pretty darned familiar and included mandated coverage and augmented public subsidies.

He did some important things for the environment- up to a point- by signing legislation to regulate pesticides and to police oceans and protect marine mammals, just to name a few.


Nixon was known for small acts of kindness, which were rarely remarked upon.
Yet, there were moments like these which reminds you of how the dark side seemed to take over completely after a time.

‘Fretting as he waited for the rain to lift and give Tricia the outdoor wedding, she hoped for, Nixon had raged, sequentially, about his enemies. It was a list that included ‘long-haired, dirty looking’ protesters; the eastern establishment, feminists; teachers’ unions; Jews, African Americans, and the ‘softies’ of the Ivy league; the ass kissers and butter uppers in the bureaucracy; and the lousy dirty… cowardly bastards in the press.’

Nixon encouraged Haldeman- the White House Chief of Staff- to enlist thugs from the Teamsters Union to beat up protesters.

‘They’ve got guys who’ll go in and knock their heads off,’ Nixon said.

“Sure. Murderers,” said Haldeman.


‘This is the time men have to be strong, Nixon told his aides. ‘I don’t have contempt for strong men that disagree with me- like the communists. I respect them.

I have utter contempt for the so-called… intellectuals who put themselves on a high moral plane and are just weak.

‘Weak, selfish, and cowardly, Kissinger chimed in.

‘Clowns, dilettante intellectuals…. Who bite us like sand flies.



In Nixon’s attempts to block the press-

“It was the duty of a free press ‘to prevent… the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die,’ wrote Justice Hugo Black.


“Washington is a jaundiced town. Nixon was welcomed back to the Capitol for Hubert Humphrey’s funeral in 1978, and to a state dinner honoring Deng at the Carter White House in 1979. He was visibly proud to join Ford and Carter in 1981 and represent the United States at the rites for the assassinated Anwar Sadat. The trinity inspired Senator Bob Dole’s arch description, at a Gridiron dinner, of the three former presidents as: ‘See no evil. Hear no evil. And Evil.


Overall, this was an incredibly insightful biography, very well researched and outlined. Nixon will never paint a sympathetic figure in my mind, and this book does nothing to expel that image of him. In fact, my opinion of him is still steeped in contempt, but I did get a much clearer picture of him as a man, a human being, a husband, a father, and as a politician.

I enjoyed reading about Nixon’s early political career, how the author builds Nixon’s burgeoning personality, the many ways he changed over the years, his insecurities, and sensitivities to slights which made him work harder to prove himself, yet led to his ultimate downfall.

‘What did the President know and when did he know it” - He knew it all, and he knew it all along.

This book covers several decades of politics, with many interesting tidbits I'd never heard about, leading up to the resignation of Nixon, with a short look at his life outside of politics.

After reading this book, I sat back and wondered how on earth we survived it all.

In the seventies, I was just a kid, concerned more about playground politics than Washington politics, holed up in my room applying copious amounts of blue eye shadow and strawberry lip gloss, dancing around to Casey Kasem’s top forty countdown on the FM dial. I was pretty much oblivious to most of the details back then, and had forgotten many of the details I had learned, but this seemed like a perfect time to take a measured look back at the events that shaped a nation and the man behind one of the darkest, coldest, and most corrupt administrations we experienced…. So far.

I was thankful for the author’s approach, steering clear from adding his own slant or political opinion to the book. He neither attempted to evoke a sympathetic view of Nixon, in an attempt to soften our viewpoint, nor did he ruthlessly crucify him with a disdainful tone. He didn’t attempt to take one side over the other, but presented the book as a biography should be presented- with as neutral in tone as possible. Let the facts speak for themselves and back up your information with credible sources and you will done the subject justice.

Nixon, like so many other world leaders had many, many sides to his personality. ‘Tricky Dick’ turned out to be far more interesting than I ever could have imagined and this book has left a big impression on me.

This book is perfectly presented and is a riveting, absorbing read, something that is rarely the case when reading non-fiction politics or history.




5 stars

grs909's review against another edition

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4.0

Tricky Dicky - whether you liked him, hated him, remember him or not, this is a good book about him. And a long one, too.

rhonag's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced

5.0

libraryneenja's review against another edition

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5.0

I've never really read about Nixon, or Watergate, or any of the other major events surrounding him. I just had sort of this general knowledge from history class and references made. That said, it was weird for me to connect the young man I read about here with what I knew happened with the man he became. Nixon was brilliant but seemed to lack confidence, and made good decisions that got outshined by the bad ones. I found myself actually feeling a lot of sympathy for him, how things spiraled, how things lead up to his resignation. This was an amazing biography that took a look at Nixon from all sides, it didn't demonize him and it didn't excuse his behavior.

skitch41's review against another edition

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5.0

There have been a couple of recent biographies on Richard Nixon, but each of them has been fatally flawed. [b:Being Nixon: A Man Divided|25241663|Being Nixon A Man Divided|Evan Thomas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1427791025s/25241663.jpg|44848456] by [a:Evan Thomas|7112|Evan Thomas|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1269306859p2/7112.jpg] is so sympathetic that you would think Nixon was an innocent victim. However, [b:One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon|25440225|One Man Against the World The Tragedy of Richard Nixon|Tim Weiner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430171577s/25440225.jpg|45202778] by [a:Tim Weiner|159090|Tim Weiner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217934729p2/159090.jpg] is so condemnatory that you would think that Nixon was both incompetent and evil. It seemed as if balance was impossible when talking about the 37th President of the United States. Until this biography that is.

Noted for his recent biographies of Clarence Darrow and Rep. "Tip" O'Neill, John Farrell has written a well-balanced biography of this complicated man's life. Throughout the whole book, Mr. Farrell notes how political "dirty tricks" were always a part of Nixon's campaigns, but what started off with some terrible red-baiting, which was not illegal if not ethical either, got worse and worse with each election Nixon was on the ballot until it lead to his authorization of the blackball operations in CREEP and, ultimately, Watergate. Mr. Farrell is correct to point out that presidents since FDR had been doing some shady election s*%t thanks to J. Edgar Hoover, but that doesn't excuse what Nixon did before and after the break-in.

Mr. Farrell also notes the hostility Nixon faced from the press following his congressional prosecution of Alger Hiss. Was Nixon the victim of a double standard in the press? Probably, but again, that doesn't excuse what he did.

But what makes this biography truly great is how well written it is. Mr. Farrell not only has done an incredible amount of research for this book, but he has crafted a biography that is a joy to read. I will say that once Nixon enters the White House he begins to lean on the White House tapes too much. Nevertheless, Mr. Farrell's writing is as enjoyable as the incredible amount of research he brings to his subject.

There is only one thing wrong with this biography and that is the structure of its opening chapters. In the first two chapters, Mr. Farrell recounts Nixon's first campaign for Congress in 1946 and the political dirty tricks that would become Nixon's drug and one of Mr. Farrell's overriding themes. At the same time, he reveals enough about Nixon's childhood, service in the Pacific during World War II, and political backers that you felt like he could've kept going on from 1946. Instead, after chapter 2, Mr. Farrell goes back to Nixon's birth and for chapters 3 and 4 relates the years before 1946. Considering how much information Mr. Farrell peppered about these years in the first two chapters, going back to the early years in chapters 3 and 4 felt superfluous.

In summation, in spite of its strange opening structure, this is one of the finest, most well-balanced biographies about a deeply complicated and controversial figure in American history. If you are looking to learn more about Richard Nixon, look no further than this book.

glowe2's review against another edition

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3.0

Good solid biography of Nixon. The book focuses primarily on his life between 1945 and 1968 to lay the groundwork for his presidential years and Watergate.

Once Nixon is elected president, the book details his attempts to end the Vietnam War, his desire to build a relationship with China and re-establish conservative norms to the domestic culture in the United States at the time.

You will see parallels with the political climate in 2019 where personal loyalty to the president and political party outweighs the commitment to the Constitution, democratic ideas or philosophies. Like Trump, Nixon also viewed governmental agencies (FBI, CIA, Justice Department, IRS) as potential tools to use against his enemies or cover up misdeeds of his administration and friends.

The author did a good job of both humanizing Nixon and pointing out his character flaws which ultimately resulted in his resignation as President.