Perlstein's Nixon is a cartoon figure, not in the mode of Herblock, whose caricatures, while vicious, were nonetheless original and uncomfortably recognizable to Nixon’s friends, but plastic, one-dimensional, and unrecognizable except to the most fervid of Nixon’s enemies. Those of us who have read the preceding books will avoid it: there are far too many legitimate analyses and critiques of Trump, or Nixon, to waste time with fluff. He will, in all probability, continue his uninspired, shallow chronicles of Republican politicians with a book on Donald Trump.

Perlstein has previously published volumes on Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Reagan. Between the minutiae and the lacunae, Perlstein's account of what Nixon meant to America is very sparse indeed. If, on the other hand, one is interested in understanding how Richard Nixon affected American government and political history, one's time would be better spent elsewhere. If the reader is looking for a fairly complete, easily digestible chronicle of America in the 1960s, the book may serve its purpose. In nearly a thousand pages, Perlstein essays to cover Nixon's life from his college days up to his re-election to the presidency in 1972. (Obviously, with so many accounts, the details can become somewhat repetitive.) 'Nixonland,' by Rick Perlstein, is notable primarily for its lack of focus and its meandering style. Ambrose's classic trilogy, 'Nixon'), and most are worth reading or at least skimming. Leaving aside his self-serving memoir, 'RN,' these books range from the very specialized (Joe McGinness' 'The Selling of the President 1968') to the expansive and scholarly (Stephen A. Glenn Greenwald-co-founder of The Intercept and one of the main journalists who broke the Snowden story-draws out the parallels between Daniel Ellsberg‘s Pentagon Papers and today’s Wikileakers, including Snowden and recently released Chelsea Manning.There are, at the end of 2022, somewhere between 250 and 300 full-length books in print concerning Richard M. She tells a broader story about the culture of an institution that has always chafed against the presidential leash. Edgar Hoover, the founding G-man of the FBI-discusses another set of parallels: from Nixon-Hoover to Trump-Comey. He’s spiced up the Nixon legend in a big one-volume life full of fresh letters and tapes and lines we’d almost forgotten -to David Frost, famously, when he spelled out the ultimate executive privilege: “When the president does it,” Nixon said, “that means that it is not illegal.” Beverly Gage-historian at Yale working on a new biography of J. John Aloysius Farrell, the esteemed biographer of Tip O’Neill in the Congress, and Clarence Darrow in the courtroom, joins us.