Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full | 
 enlarge | Author: Conrad Black
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $40.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 96644
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1184
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 2.3
ISBN: 1586485199
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.924092
EAN: 9781586485191
ASIN: 1586485199
Publication Date: October 22, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The acclaimed biographer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt takes on Richard Nixon in the first full biography in a generation, bringing a unique perspective to the life and politics of one of America's most controversial public figures. From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, Richard Nixon was a polarizing figure in American politics, admired for his intelligence, savvy, and strategic skill, and reviled for his shady manner and cutthroat tactics. Conrad Black, whose epic biography of FDR was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, now separates the good in Nixon--his foreign initiatives, some of his domestic policies, and his firm political hand--from the sinister, in a book likely to generate enormous attention and controversy. Black believes the hounding of Nixon from office was partly political retribution from a lifetime's worth of enemies and Nixon's misplaced loyalty to unworthy subordinates, and not clearly the consequence of crimes in which he participated. Conrad Black's own recent legal travails, though hardly comparable, have undoubtedly given him an unusual insight into the pressures faced by Nixon in his last two years as president and the first few years of his retirement.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
This is an excellent read October 30, 2008
I have been reading Presidential biographies over the last few years beginning with Washington and just completed this one on Nixon. This one by Conrad Black is an excellent read (his one FDR is also excellent)!
The author takes the approach of giving you detailed information and facts and allows you to decide whether decisions and actions were good, bad, indifferent, etc.
Certainly Nixon abused his presidency, but so did the other Presidents in the 1960's (JFK and LBJ), and Black doesn't let that fact go unnoticed.
If you are looking for a quick summary of Nixon's life and presidency this is not the book for you. If you are looking, however, for an exhaustive biography of Nixon this is the book for you.
a controversial book September 6, 2008
the author has his own problems, but if you want to understand the period covered by Nixon, it helps to have a full narrative without all the analysis. the new yorker has opined that this effort is essentially an apology, but in the years since Nixon's flawed presidency, we are able to see that so much of what Nixon wanted was just right, even as he also made some terrible decisions and surrounded himself with a few crooks.
it is an easy though exhausting read (lots of pages) but for those of us under 70, it captures so much that after the reader is done, then he can reassess the more venomous acccounts. for example, nixon's childhood here seems less about the creation of neurosis, than simply a hard one, but his parents really did love him.
but then we have watergate. oh well!
 Great book April 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a great read. I was thrilled to discover that Conrad wrote a fair and even-handed biography of the late President. (I enjoyed Nixon's memoirs, too, so lengthy tomes aren't a problem for me, as they might be for a few of the reviewers.) I liked the book's emphasis on Nixon's persistence and ability to remain on the political scene for so many years, despite media prejudice and pumped-up mobbings. Nixon had to perform on one of the most volatile stages of American history, and this book made it clear that he managed to stay on it, decade after decade.
An exceptional human being April 8, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Richard Nixon was one of the most influential man in the world, and also someone who was misunderstood
Excellent biography in Black's own style April 7, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Conrad Black is not a typical historian or biographer. Indeed his approach and style are singular. Unlike "professional" historians and idelogues like Robert Dallek, Black does not have an ideological axe to grind. Although a professed conservative, Black's biography of FDR is the best I've read, utterly balanced in its approach to the man who so divided the nation before he saved the world from the darkness of fascism.
At 1,059 pages, the book is too long. Yet, if I were editing it, I would be hard-pressed to figure out what to cut from the manuscript. Even so, only the dedicated student will make it all the way through or not skim in some places.
Black does not flatter his subject. He sees Nixon as a man of some great strengths and some equally great weaknesses. Thirty-some years later, in fact, and reminded by Black's book, i56 is still mystifying that Nixon was so tone-deaf in his handling of the Watergate "scandal". Black makes a solid case that Watergate was a tempest in a teapot that, with the aid of left-wing journalists, venal Democrat politicians and intellectuals and pundits, was turned into a coup against a sitting President. Certainly nothing that Nixon did was any worse than what was done in the name of national security or just plain politics by Roosevet, Kennedy and Johnson. But Nixon had been hated by the left-wing for his anti-Communism since he first appeared on the political scene.
Critical phrases such as "Nixon's duplicity acheived a new depth . . . " mark Black's narrative, leaving no doubt that Black sees all sides of Nixon.
Nixon was a President of great historical significance. The fact that he was so endlessly attacked by the left-wing is proof, in a way, of his power. He also made mistakes, such as imposing price controls. He never gave up, though, successfully rehabilitating his image before his death.
As he did with Roosevelt, Black has written a superb biography of another controversial, immensely talented, vastly misunderstood American President. Well worth reading, but the length of the book is daunting.
Jerry
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