Contemporary Literary Criticism | Ambrose, Stephen - William L. O'Neill (review date 30 December 1991)

William L. O'Neill (review date 30 December 1991)

SOURCE: “The High Cost of Watergate,” in New Leader, December 30, 1991, pp. 16-17.

[In the following review, O'Neill offers praise for Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.]

The first line of Stephen E. Ambrose's smashing conclusion to his biography of Richard M. Nixon [Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990] says it all: “This is the political story of the century.”

In volume one Ambrose described Nixon's rapid rise from small-town lawyer to the Vice Presidency, his narrow loss to John F. Kennedy, and then his humiliating defeat by Edmund G. “Pat” Brown for the governorship of California in 1962. That would have finished any other politician, and at the time everyone except Nixon believed he was through. But no sooner was his “final” press conference at an end than he began planning his future.

In volume two Ambrose showed how over the next few years Nixon...

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