The Conviction of Richard Nixon

Starred review from December 31, 2007
In 1977, three years after his resignation, Richard Nixon returned to the public eye in a series of interviews with British television journalist David Frost, for which Nixon received $1 million. Figuring his political and lawyerly skills were more than a match for Frost's interrogation, Nixon instead found himself doing exactly what his successor, Gerald Ford, had tried to prevent with a presidential pardon: publicly admitting that he had broken the law. Reston Jr. was one of the aides Frost hired to help him plan his line of attack; this book, written at the time of the interviews, is being published for the first time now (Reston has supplied a foreword and afterword), but it hardly reads like history. Instead, watching the comeuppance of a highly unpopular and divisive president will provide gratifying thrills for the politically disenchanted. Some references may fly by a modern audience's radar (“Ralph Abernathy pissing on the presidency�), but Reston's passion for finding the chinks in Nixon's armor makes for fascinating reading.

July 1, 2007
These books depict low points in Richard Nixon's political career: his loss of the presidency to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and a 1977 televised recounting of the Watergate scandal, which had driven him from office three years earlier. Donaldson ("Truman Defeats Dewey") presents his third excellent investigation of a post-World War II presidential election. Television's importance in creating and spreading the candidates' images and messages, the daily use of air travel, and the elevation of primaries, rather than conventions, as the way to choose candidates all contributed to making the 1960 contest the first modern campaign, claims Donaldson. The author covers both the Nixon and the JFK campaigns concisely and informatively, presenting the many highs and lows of each. JFK's razor-thin win was an immediate victory for the Democrats, but his election set the stage for Nixon's victory in 1968 and the emergence of the conservative-dominated modern Republican Party. Strongly recommended for public and academic libraries.

"If the president does it, that means that it is not illegal" is one of the most notorious Nixon quotes that surfaced during the David Frost interviews with Nixon, which enthralled the American public in 1977. Reston ("Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition and the Defeat of the Moors") was hired by Frost, the celebrity British TV broadcaster, in 1976 to provide the background information on Watergate for the interviews. Nixon agreed to the sessions for $1 million; the 28 hours of tapings were boiled down to four 90-minute programs. Approximately 45 million viewersone-third of the U.S. adult populationwatched the Watergate interview, during which, as Reston dramatically recounts, Nixon came as close as he ever did to apologizing for his role in the cover-up. Reston originally wrote this book in 1977 but stuck it away, only to fish it out recently to give to playwright Peter Morgan, whose "Frost/Nixon", currently on Broadway, is based on this work. Reston's brief but insightful account is recommended for public libraries.Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.