John A. FarrellRezensionen

In John Farrell’s compelling biography of Richard Nixon we are reminded that the US Supreme court ruled that Executive Privilege allowed the President to conceal documents for national security purposes unless the intent was to conceal illegal acts.

Over the next few days we will learn if the Senate considers extortion of a foreign leader rises to the threshold of an impeachable act, but this Senate will not subpoena either witnesses or executive documents to convict or exonerate President Donald J. Trump.

What would Richard Nixon have thought of Trump’s activities? He very likely he would have done the same thing and considered himself above the law. And it very well could be where Trump got the idea.

And Richard Nixon would have considered both himself and Trump more casualties in the long and sordid history of presidential dirty tricks, including the theft of the 1960 election by John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and the more recent theft of the 2000 election by the Republican-dominated Florida Supreme Court.

“They” are out to get me, Nixon believed. But then again, in Washington “getting” people is a time-honored sport.

Nixon, as you may recall, was forced out of the Presidency by his own party after investigators got their hands on “the smoking gun,” transcripts of Oval Office tapes in which Nixon made it clear he was part of the coverup of the Watergate break-ins. And obstructed justice. And tried to get the CIA to interfere in FBI investigations.

Nixon maintained that he was fingered because he was a bastard — the only thing he owned up to. That if he was part of the establishment he would have gotten a pass.

Of course, Nixon had a long history of being a bastard. It helped him get elected to the House of Representatives and later the Senate. And it really helped him become Eisenhower’s running-mate in the 1952 presidential election.

He was a red-baiter and later on as President initiated bombing campaigns in North Vietnam and Cambodia. And he kiboshed talks to end the war in Vietnam to secure his Presidential bid in 1968. He also did little to halt the murder and displacement of millions of East Pakistanis in what would eventually become Bangladesh.

And as dirty as American national politics could get, that didn’t compare with the dirty tricks in foreign policy like (Nixon and Kissinger)toppling a duly elected Chilean President, (Kennedy) engineering the murder of a S. Vietnamese leader and coup in that country, (Truman) dropping A-bombs on two Japanese cities, (Eisenhower) deposing the elected leader of Iran, (Kennedy) hiring Mafia assassins to poison Fidel Castro, and the (Eisenhower) ousting of Guatemala’s democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz.

Donald Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani hearkens back to the good ole days when the ends always justified the means. It’s as if the 1975 Senate Select (Church) Committee on abuses perpetrated by US intelligence agencies never existed.

And, as we know from the Edward Snowden revelations, the tradition established by J. Edgar Hoover and others surveillance of American citizens (yes, it was the Kennedys who ordered the bugging of ML King’s boudoir) continues with massive surveillance of American citizens through social media, cellphone tower pings, and facebook.

Ironically, Nixon didn’t need the dirty tricks in his re-election campaign in 1972 any more than George W. needed the Patriot Act to subdue Al-Qaeda. (Or takedown Saddam Husain for that matter). The Democrats fumbled their own campaign, and one can wonder if they aren’t doing it again.

But Nixon wasn’t all villain. As Vice-President he worked hard to help integrate the schools after Brown v. Board of Education and the stand-off at Little Rock. And as President he worked to implement the now discredited program of bussing minorities to schools.

He created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet Union, and stymied his Soviet adversaries by opening up US relations with Communist China.

Fifty years after the “China Opening” might be a good time to reflect on its impact. For one thing, it reduced the likelihood of a nuclear holocaust. But it also eventually resulted in China joining the World Trade Organization and a massive transfer of wealth from the West to the East.

Good for poverty-stricken Chinese.

Not so good for Rust Belt America.

Like Lyndon Johnson, Nixon came from nothing. He was a colleague of the red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and at the outset a friend of John Kennedy.

In spite of a deep inferiority complex (or maybe because of it) he married a beautiful woman and scraped his way to the top of the pile.

They all hated Tricky Dick (a sobriquet he picked up very early in his career), but they couldn’t ignore him.
The moral of the story is that a little paranoia can take you quite far in American government.

In another of life’s little ironies Nixon didn’t live long enough to learn that CIA official Mark Felt was Woodward and Bernstein’s Deep Throat source. When Felt himself ran afoul of lawmakers Nixon defended him against his critics. I’m sure it was no accident that Felt kept this secret almost to his own grave.

This is a wonderful telling of the story and not without some colourful editorializing by the author. I hope somebody turns it into a Richard III for our age. Now that I think about it, somebody probably has.

As the 1976 presidential election approached, it struck me that one man—Richard Nixon—had been on the ticket in five of the previous six elections. As far back as I could remember, he had been a significant player on the political scene. It follows that you cannot understand his life and career apart from the times in which he lived, nor can you understand national and world affairs in the second half of the twentieth century without considering him.
Add to that a personality that was—to put it mildly—complicated, and you have a daunting challenge for any prospective biographer.
John A. Farrell met and mastered this challenge.
This book would be valuable for its research alone. Farrell was the first to have access to nearly all of the oval office tapes (some with a bearing on national security remain under wraps) as well as memos and other written records. Among his scoops was uncovering written evidence of the long-rumored Chennault affair, thus documenting Nixon’s felonious, perhaps treasonous, sabotage of the Paris peace talks in 1968. Sadly, other than securing his presidential election, it achieved nothing. The deal finally struck four years later, after the death of 20,000 further G.I.s and many times that of Vietnamese and other Asians, was the same as that tabled in 1968.
Farrell interviewed many figures associated with Nixon, both as friends and enemies. The fact that Nixon had enemies should come as no surprise. Perhaps no other U. S. political figure in the twentieth century was as vilified as he, something he more than reciprocated; Nixon was a consummate grudge-holder and hater. Farrell calls it a cycle of enmity.
In this trait, he was his father’s son. Farrell traces how the root of Nixon’s divided nature was that, at times, he was Frank Nixon’s son and, at other times, Hannah’s. Nixon idolized his Quaker mother yet received little nurturing from her to balance his father’s demanding and brutal treatment. Even if she hadn’t been absorbed with caring for two tubercular sons who died, she was an emotionally remote person. Farrell observes that Nixon early concluded that he was not easy to like and that it hurt him.
So, Nixon had his enemies. For me, though, the insights Farrell obtained in his interviews with Nixon’s friends, associates, and supporters were revealing. None of them were blind to how deeply-flawed Nixon was. Some, like Henry Kissinger, saw him in terms of Greek tragedy, in which the protagonist’s fate is clearly foreshadowed by his character yet unavoidable.
I was provoked to read this by watching Robert Altman’s harrowing masterpiece, Secret Honor. Until then, I thought I’d known all I needed to know about “tricky Dick” from what I couldn’t avoid knowing by following the news. The film made me curious to get a detailed overview, however. A half-century after Nixon became the only president to resign from office, the time was also ripe. There was enough distance that I could revise my judgment. I had forgotten how many genuine domestic achievements came in his first term. But even that is complicated. Nixon had little interest in domestic affairs; his expertise and passion were in foreign affairs. Yet he staffed his administration with several talented hires in domestic affairs and let them get on with it.
Yet even that is not the whole story. His administration’s remarkable progress in school desegregation accorded with his long-held progressive views on civil rights. If that surprises you as it did me, it’s because Nixon realized early on that few votes would be gained if that side of him were known. The same holds true with his moderately enlightened personal views on abortion and same-sex partnerships. Meanwhile, when Spiro Agnew, Pat Buchanan, and others waged their campaign to divide Americans, they knew they did so with their boss’s blessing. At least, the Frank Nixon side of him. And both his Frank and Hannah sides deplored hippies, free love, drugs, and crime.
Yet, as mentioned, it was to foreign affairs that Nixon devoted his attention, achieving an astounding reset through his trip to China and the SALT talks with the Soviet Union. In this, he was seconded by Kissinger, but this was his strategy. Kissinger, by the way, is comically obsequious in the tape excerpts quoted by Farrell.
Above all, it is remarkable how such an awkward, troubled man could rise to the political pinnacle through hard work and force of will. That, and from the outset, generous donations from California oilmen, discretely funneled through back channels. This aspect of Nixon’s career is also documented. He was not only a self-made man; he was, from his first campaign for congress, a “made” man. This willingness to bend his convictions to conform to his wealthy backers and the ruthlessness and skillful use of innuendo with which he waged every campaign he entered from 1946 on is distasteful. It’s no wonder that when the amateurish Watergate break-in led to the walls inexorably closing in on him, Nixon had few reserves of goodwill among those who knew him best, whether friend or foe.

(2) I loved this book! I am not sure why it does not seem to be more popular on LT. Long-listed for the National non-fiction book award 2022. I am not always a big biography reader, but I am from Massachusetts and grew up with Kennedy as our senator. My parents were Kennedy Democrats and my city was full of working class Irish/Italian immigrants flowing out from South Boston. I named my son Edward, and we call him Teddy - in homage to Massachusetts - my grandfather, Ted Williams, and Ted Kennedy - so of course I would read this...

I am amazed at how many things that are commonplace now such as HIPPA, CHIP, chain immigration had Kennedy's imprint on them. In addition, he was key in brokering peace in Northern Ireland and ending the Vietnam War. Amazing that senators actually worked across party lines in my lifetime. What a great senator he was. I completely remember like it was yesterday his showing up to vote on healthcare legislation while dying of brain cancer, JFK, Jrs plane crash, the skiing death of RFK's son, the Palm Beach trial of William Kennedy Smith. Of course what I don't remember is Chappaquidick, but felt its ghost in the whispered conversations of my elders. .. and read Joyce Carol Oates 'Black Water,' -- masterful.

Anyway, I read this voraciously for some reason. Whether it is a feeling of personal connection; whether it was because it was so well-written; so compelling -- I don't know. I just know I liked it and it was incredibly interesting to have some perspective on US events through the Bush and Clinton years. The reflective hindsight of an intelligent well informed author really helped me see things I lived through in a historical context that I found essentially 'unputdownable.' This seems weird for non-fiction biography for me. Not my usual response.

I miss Teddy with all his flaws despite the fact that I haven't lived in Mass. for most of my adult life. I have empathy, respect, and admiration for him despite his flaws. Great and fascinating reading for light-weight non-fiction readers like myself. Reads more like narrative and while long acknowledgments and sourcing - no footnotes or other distracting academia. Bravo! RIP John, Robert, and Teddy.½

The sun of a thousand virtues can be cloaked by one night of vice

And thus it was with Robert Nixon, the 37th President of the United States and the only president ever to resign from his office.

Farrell's virtue, in this book, lies in his crafting of a very endearing biography of Robert Nixon while also factually portraying his notoriously premier role in the Watergate Scandal which brought about his downfall. He charts Nixon's early poverty-stricken years; his military service and meteoric rise as Congress elect and budding Senator during the McCarthy era.

The reader is treated to a frontline seat as Nixon clinches the Vice Presidency from Eisenhower; almost forfeits it and then fights to retain it as well as his absolution in the form of his leading the Republicans to victory post-Kennedy.

Then, Farrell takes a dark turn and logically so. Based on primary material we witness the real Nixon. The groundbreaking statesman who forces Russia to a treaty and re-introduces isolationist China to the world but also a deeply suspicious and vitriolic man intoxicated by the power bequeathed to him. We journey to the dizzying heights of the Watergate edifice which has Nixon's insecurities about journalists and opponents in full glare; his over-excessive reaction to the Pentagon Papers scandal and his obfuscation of himself with the powers of an executive until he recognizes no limit to himself. Statesman but also an insecure human being with profound sadness permeating his life-Farrell makes a convincing case for the fact that had it not been for his missteps in his reaction to Watergate leaking, Nixon would today have been invoked as one of the USA's finest Presidents.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Farrell's narration of Nixon's life which is laced with considerable wit. It does not detract from Nixon as a warm human and neither does it pillory him for Watergate. Rather, it leaves that ultimate decision to the reader. I confess that I did not put this book down until bedtime. A mesmerizing and memorable read with considerably important lessons for all of us today.

He might be considered the original Cold Warrior and his quarter-century career was defined by and defined the period in the United States, but his legacy is intertwined with a landmark Washington hotel. Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell reveals the personal and political life of one of the most divisive figures of mid-20th Century America.

Farrell’s life of Richard Nixon revolves around the political life of the United States from the end of World War II to the end of the Vietnam War, in which he was a significant player. The biography begins with how Nixon entered politics before going into his childhood, courtship of Pat, and experience in World War II. While Farrell doesn’t ignore Nixon’s family life after 1946, this is essentially a political biography because that’s how Nixon lived his life. His red-baiting tactics in 1946 and 1950 heralding the McCarthy era are examined in full, the Alger Hiss case is examined in full, Nixon’s role in Eisenhower’s nomination is revealed, his friendship then antagonism with the Kennedys is full revealed, and his hate-hate relationship with the press and the Establishment is a constant theme. Once in the Oval Office however Farrell’s focus of the biography revolves around Vietnam and the events that lead up to the momentous events both foreign and domestic of 1972 that would define his legacy. With just under 560 pages of text, Farrell had a lot of history and politics that he needed choose what to focus on and what to breeze by. I did not agree with some of Farrell’s decisions when it came to Nixon’s time in the White House as it felt he was short shifting some things, not Vietnam, so he could get to Watergate; however, Farrell’s time spent on the Bangladesh Liberation War/Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 revealed new information to me and was a great addition.

Richard Nixon: The Life is a well written and informative biography of the 37th President of the United States that John A. Farrell did an impressive job in researching and authoring. While I had minor grips with Farrell’s decisions during Nixon’s years in the White House, it doesn’t undermine the overall quality of the book.

Excellent!! One of the best bio's I've read. Very informative, great flow and a bit of humor thrown in.
For a single volume bio I would highly recommend.

It takes a lot of skill to write a comprehensive single volume biography of someone with as much history as Richard Nixon and Mr. Farrell has done it. I found it to be complete and very well balanced. I actually found myself realizing some of the positive things about President Nixon that are easily lost. Those were balanced with the negatives, and there are many, presented clearly and fairly. In the end I felt a lot of sadness for how angry a life President Nixon lived. Of course it is somewhat scary to read about Nixon's blatant appeals to populism and how effective they were given our current situation. But maybe knowing the end he found is good comfort, I certainly hope so. It is interesting to read a single volume work like this and contrast it with the minutiae that you find in something like the Robert Caro LBJ series. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well written history.

Rating of 4.90.

Excellent, shorter than Ambrose but at least as well written. Can't imagine what RN would have done if he had picked up one of those girls, but per Farrell, he did try from time to time.

This book presents me with the dilemma I often face when rating biographies: how do I balance the quality of writing (Farrell writes quite nicely) with the depth of the necessary research (again, Farrell has done a good job), along with my overall feelings about the subject?

I often found myself feeling very sympathetic to the wasted raw intelligence that was young Richard. But when that was compared to his complete lack of morals as a mature politician? Bah. I am quite glad his Quaker mother didn’t live to see how degraded he became.

And do, I will cop out and rate it 3.5 stars. But definitely worth the read.½

The president was “a gut fighter….His first reaction was to fight back…to get even.”

Amongst my earliest memories during the early/mid 1970s was the ubiquity of the word Watergate. Somehow I imagined it was related to the games of dominos that my grandparents played with their friends. The designs created during the game evoked plumbing -- I was too young to grasp that Plumber was another timely designation.

Perhaps it is hubris, whatever the motivation--it is daunting to attempt to encapsulate a man's life in 540 pages, especially as one as involved Richard M. Nixon. Beginning in WWII and then retracing back to Nixon's birth and ancestors, a conflicted portrait emerges, fuelled by the dueling temperaments of his parents. Nixon--ever insecure--always felt his success while girded by hard work was purely coincidental. Dumb luck.

“Nixon “didn’t give a damn” about the finer points of domestic policy, said aide Tom Huston. “All he wanted to do was to keep the sharks away.” And so many progressive measures, crafted with the help of his administration, made their way to Nixon’s desk, where he acquiesced, signed his name, and took his just share of the credit.

The foreign policy aspects of the book were riveting, domestic less so. It is important to recognize that during the 1950s Nixon was a much more vocal supporter of civil rights than Eisenhower, Johnson or Kennedy. Nixon felt betrayed then when African-Americans voted for Kennedy in the 1960 election.

Nixon's entreaties with the Soviets and the Chinese are simply breathtaking. His approach to strife in the subcontinent is abominable. As was the stewardship of Vietnam -- though who amongst his storied predecessors handled it better?

A very human biography of a most human president.

A great book. Farrell has done a magnificent job of relating Nixon to his two
parents, the Quaker mother, Hannah, and the rogue father, Frank. It is mostlly as a result of these two that he is so screwed up/. Farrell praises him when he deserves it, mostly his friendship with many blacks in the 50s
and rips him when he screws up. especially on the 68 election. where Dick told the South Vietnamese not to join the Peace talks in Paris when we had only lost 30,000 soldiers. Very matter of fact. The author has done his homework, reading all of the Haldeman notes which corroborated the 68 story.

5508. Richard Nixon The Life, by John A. Farrell (read 22 Oct 2017) Back in July of 1995 I read Stephen Ambrose's three volume life of Nixon and on 21 Jan 2016 I read Evan Thomas' biography of Nixon. This biography by John A. Farrell was published this year and is teeming with original research and I found it completely fascinating. It is certainly even-handed and at times I was viewing it as over-friendly to Nixon, but I think it adequately shows the near-fatal flaws in NIxon while giving him credit for what good things he did. Farrell had the benefit of tapes not available to Ambrose and so this biography probably somewhat dates prior biographies of Nixon. The thoroughness of the research put into this book is very impressive and no one interested in Nixon's career can fail to be impressed by the book. The account of the events leading up to Nixon's fall is mind-boggling and demonstrates how right we were to be ready to convict him for the evil he fostered

after reading this excellent bio I ended up having respect for nixon. he did do a lot of good things. however his very dark side destroyed him.

The book was very informative and took a very clear perspective on Darrow's actions. The author sought to portray Darrow not as a activist of modern times, but as a legal figure in history.

A fantastic biography of the most famous lawyer in American history. Most people probably only know of Darrow through the Scopes Monkey Trial, but that was actually near the end of a most remarkable career. Farrell gives the reader a broader portrait of the man, talking not only about Darrow's crusade for the cause of American Labor, the focus of most of his career, but also goes into his political connections and personal life and philosophies and gives the reader a glimpse of not only the good that he accomplished, but his faults as well. Anyone who has wanted to know more about Clarence Darrow would be advised to read this book.

Statues and busts have advantages over the heroes and icons they depict. Any imperfections are superficial, unlike human flaws. Their character is fixed, not subject to further research and analysis. But anyone who insists folk heroes must be paragons of virtue ignores the reality of human nature. Even -- and perhaps especially -- those with shortcomings possess the attributes necessary for significant accomplishments.

Proof of that is seen in John A. Farrell's new biography of attorney Clarence Darrow. With access to documents prior biographers did not have, Farrell's Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned is not a hagiography of one of the nation's most famous attorneys. It provides deeper insight and perspective, showing both the public and private man, where they were alike and where they were at times vastly different.

Darrow rightfully became known as a champion of the underdog and was viewed, quite accurately, as both a radical and a rebel. To a great extent, he was a product of his times and its movements -- progressivism, free love and trade unionism. Farrell examines the role Darrow played in each, whether personally, politically or as a lawyer. The book's descriptions of Darrow's trials and tactics reflect that Darrow's style and effectiveness were bolstered by practicing in an era preceding uniform codes of evidence and in which closing arguments could stretch out over days.

Much of the highly detailed book focuses on the cases that made Darrow the most famous lawyer in America -- Eugene Debs, labor leader William Haywood for the assassination of a former Idaho governor, two other labor leaders for the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, Leopold and Loeb, and, of course, the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial". As Farrell points out in an endnote, four of these five cases were dubbed crimes or trials of the century by the press. And while Darrow was famous when he arrived for the Scopes trial, "by the time he left, he was an American folk hero."

Yet Darrow left even his most ardent supporters puzzled. Despite being a major supporter of the progressive movement and its ideas and principles, he had no hesitancy challenging the constitutionality of an election law the movement passed in Illinois when doing so helped acquit his client. The man known for representing the poor and downtrodden would be seen taking on the cases of major corporations and the wealthy. Darrow explained it as a means of helping finance the cases for which he received little or no fee, an argument that makes sense in light of Darrow's persistent efforts to become wealthy himself.

Clarence Darrow:Attorney for the Damned takes readers where other biographies or Darrow's own The Story of My Life have not. It delves into relationships and matters Darrow himself left out of his book. Likewise, the preeminent Darrow biography to date, Irving Stone's Clarence Darrow for the Defense, was written with the cooperation of Darrow's widow and, first published in 1941, Stone did not have access to many documents Farrell uses.

The paradox that is Darrow might be resolved by concluding that his view is that defense of a client requires whatever it takes. A couple of the overarching elements of the book seem to support that. One is that much of his attitude toward the law and the world stemmed from the belief that "men's actions are determined not by choice, but by the unshakable influences of heredity and environment." Farrell's review of Darrow's childhood in an unconventional home suggests that background greatly influenced who Darrow became. Darrow's deterministic beliefs also manifested themselves in his closing arguments, which focused as much on a defendant's background and the evils of society as the evidence. Farrell's use of transcripts of Darrow's arguments fully supports his contention that Darrow "had the audacity to treat judges and juries to original sermons on an intellectual plane far higher than the usual courtroom wrangling, and to do so in a captivating way." Often focusing on social ills and emotion, Darrow wanted his argument to not just influence but to shape the opinions of a judge or jury.

Farrell makes clear that despite his accomplishments, Darrow had plenty of flaws. His belief in the free love movement made him a serial philanderer and, in fact, he had a decades-long relationship with a woman not his wife. Darrow's determinism also seemed to impact his value system. According to Farrell, Darrow had a "willingness to dispose of the customary ethical standards -- like accuracy or confidentiality -- when a client was facing unjust punishment, especially in a capital case." And, of course, whether punishment is "unjust" tends to be in the eye of the beholder and, in Darrow's eyes, "the motive and not the act was the controlling measure of morality."

This approach led to Darrow being tried twice for bribing a juror. Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned looks closely at those cases and whether, from a legal standpoint as opposed to Darrow's ethical standpoint, he was guilty. Along the way, Farrell reveals that more than a decade after the first trial, Darrow paid $4,500 (roughly $55,000 today) to the juror who was most active in challenging the prosecution during the trial.

Farrell leaves little doubt that Darrow earned and deserved his reputation as the preeminent defense lawyer of his time and an American legal icon. He also leaves little doubt Darrow has his flaws. But what a person is able to do with their flaws is more important than the fact they exist.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

3508. Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, by John Aloysius Farrell (read Dec 8 2001) I found this a stupendously good book, eminently readable. I just ate it up. It is favorable to its subject (Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987), but is not hagiographical. It was so good I could read it while TV was on, since the subject matter was far more interesting than what was on TV. It is a journalist's biography, rather than an academic one, but it has footnotes and a good bibliography. This book was really fun to read.