Contemporary Literary Criticism | Ambrose, Stephen - Herbert Parmet (review date 4-18 May 1987)

Herbert Parmet (review date 4-18 May 1987)

SOURCE: “Resurrecting Poor Richard,” in New Leader, May 4-18, 1987, pp. 23-5.

[In the following review, Parmet offers positive assessment of Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962.]

In the aftermath of his Presidency, the consensus view of Richard M. Nixon was nowhere more sharply put than in Jonathan Schell's The Time of Illusion. What characterized the Californian's politics, we were told, was the pursuit of a deliberate policy of “positive polarization.” Now, a decade after Schell's analysis, we are reminded that this singular propensity was displayed well before Nixon became Chief Executive. By the time he reached the age of 47, he had “polarized the public more than any other man of his era.” He was “the most hated and feared man in America—and next to Eisenhower himself, the most admired and wanted.”

The first half of historian Stephen E. Ambrose's...

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