Contemporary Literary Criticism | Ambrose, Stephen - Anthony Howard (review date 1 February 1992)

Anthony Howard (review date 1 February 1992)

SOURCE: “By Hook or By Crook,” in Spectator, February 1, 1992, p. 32.

[In the following review, Howard offers positive assessment of Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.]

‘He went out the same way he came in, no class'—that was John Kennedy's comment on his rival the day after Richard Nixon lost the presidential election to him in 1960. Many would say the same about Nixon's last demeaning exit from the White House 14 years later. For most of this third volume of his epic biography of the only US President ever to be forced to resign, Stephen E. Ambrose seems to belong to their company. The story of Nixon's deceit and dissimulation over Watergate has not lost its ability to chill and, although Ambrose tries hard to tell it dispassionately, the meticulously researched case he builds up ensures that the final result is totally devastating. When, beleaguered and embattled, the 37th...

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