To read this biography with an eye only toward the parallels between the two presidents would be lazy and unfair, a disservice to Farrell’s nuanced scholarship. But the context here is unignorable. The similarities between Nixon and Trump leap off the page like crickets ... Like Trump, Nixon was a monomaniac on the stump, obsessed with the enemies lurking within. Nixon, too, had a penchant for sowing mayhem and a gourmand’s appetite for revenge, especially in the wee hours of the morning. (Trump tweets. Nixon made phone calls) ... He’s 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.
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 ... That sense of persecution fed Nixon’s penchant for chicanery. Farrell’s deep research exposes new evidence of this tendency ... He stained his reputation and that of the presidency. As Farrell’s outstanding biography reminds us, the consequences have endured. They remain toxic.
That's a lot of material to pack into one volume, even one that weighs in at 750 pages, but Farrell does it while providing revelations and insights along the way ... Farrell devastatingly shows how Nixon sabotaged the 1968 peace talks in Paris to end the Vietnam War by using Chinese-American activist Anna Chennault, a staunch anti-communist, as a conduit between his presidential campaign and the South Vietnamese government ... Richard Nixon: The Life falters only when it feels rushed. Near its end, a lot of details fly by fast and furiously. A reader who is not steeped in decades' worth of Nixon lore will find this an extremely valuable introduction to the life and times of one of our most consequential presidents.
Mr. Farrell’s comprehensive, one-volume biography is welcome. The author is an investigative reporter, experienced biographer and a prodigious researcher—there are 124 pages of meaty endnotes. In lively, vigorous prose, he takes readers through Nixon’s career, offering incisive judgments and revealing details along the way ... Mr. Farrell is not afraid to judge Nixon severely, but he does not neglect his accomplishments.
...an absorbing, insightful biography ... In a biography that is more synthesis than revelation, more analysis than breaking news, Farrell puts the politician’s accomplishments and failures in context to give a good accounting of one of the most fascinating, enigmatic figures of 20th-century America.
...[a] superb new book ... Farrell's book is the smartest and most insightful (and wittiest – there are many passages of pin-point deadpan humor in these pages, and they're much appreciated) biography of Nixon since Jonathan Aitken's excellent 1994 Nixon: A Life. But even this smart author often tries to burnish the reputation of his subject ... This is the most formidable attempt yet made to put Richard Nixon in perspective. But some reputations can't be salvaged.
Farrell’s approach: take the Richard Nixon whom people think they know, and show that they don’t know him at all. The pick-and-shovel work is evident in the book’s 136 pages of endnotes and bibliography. It is no small feat to humanize Richard Nixon, but Farrell does it ... Farrell does a masterful job of storytelling, synchronizing the beginning of what would become Watergate with the marriage of Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox, and intercutting the expanding scandal with Nixon’s trip to China, a treatment that is more like a novel than a biography. Many writers could take lessons in clarity and organization from Farrell’s handling of Watergate.
...[a] beautifully written and deeply insightful biography ... 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.
There's a lot to navigate, and Farrell does so with ease. Without dipping into melodrama or hyperbole, he lays out Nixon's rise from a lower-middle-class kid in Yorba Linda named after King Richard the Lionheart to his swiftly acquired identity of 'a man of destiny' ... With a mix of morbid fascination and deep empathy, Farrell humanizes Nixon, but he doesn't let him off the hook ... That dichotomy between brooding schemer and extroverted leader has long defined the Nixon dynamic. But with The Life, Farrell has etched those history-shaking contradictions into the most vivid — and the most startling — relief to date.
...an insightful and engaging biography ... There’s no avoiding the fact that with Nixon he’s plowing much familiar ground, but he does it vividly, shedding yet more light on one of our darkest presidencies ... In all, Nixon wrote a dozen books, some of them quite good if rather self-serving. But none of them were as honest, balanced or revealing as Farrell’s.
...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.
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 ... 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.
Mr. Farrell has captured and conveyed the essential Nixon in an elegantly written, expertly researched, commanding and compelling rise and fall narrative. His Richard Nixon is the best biography of our 37th president we have, or are likely to have … Acknowledging that Nixon’s aim was to reduce the support of working class whites for the Democrats, who held commanding majorities in the House and Senate during his presidency, Mr. Farrell reminds us that Nixon signed landmark environmental legislation, initiated affirmative action policies, and persuaded Southerners to desegregate their public schools … Mr. Farrell demonstrates, however, that Nixon subordinated just about everything and everybody to his political self-interest.
