A glowing biography ... Affectionate reminiscences from Pat’s daughters, sons-in-law and the daughter of her best friend provide color to this biography — but that color is Republican red. Lee is quick to discount the negative press Pat received and to discredit those who stood in Pat’s way as driven by sexism or jealousy ... One imagines she would entirely approve of both her idealized portrait here as well as Lee’s unwillingness to look too far under the surface.
Well-researched but awkwardly constructed ... One crippling feature of Lee’s technique is the way it often and exasperatingly doesn’t make clear who is speaking or writing within a set of quotation marks.
This inaccurate spin on the past is what sinks Heath Hardage Lee’s new biography ... Lee’s repeated contradictions and whitewashing of recent history keep The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon as unknowable as she was in life ... Compounding this is Lee’s rewriting of Richard Nixon’s political career that at times borders on the absurd.
