Nixon's Enemies

From Library Journal Richard Nixon has been taking quite a beating since the short-lived era of good feelings that immediately followed his funeral in 1994. Recent excellent books such as William Bundy's A Tangled Web (LJ 3/15/98) and Jeffrey Kimball's Nixon's Vietnam War (LJ 11/1/98) even cast doubt on Nixon's highly regarded foreign policy triumphs. Kurz (The Reagan Years A to Z, Lowell House, 1996) here presents a readable summary of the enemies that made Nixon's reputation?politicians Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas, Alger Hiss, and communism?and the enemies that destroyed it: the media, Congress, the liberal elite, and, ultimately, Nixon himself. Kurz echoes those biographers who view Nixon as "magnificent in defeat but at his worst in victory"?the one president who allowed his obsession with enemies to consume and ruin his career. Nixon, the "statesman and scoundrel," the author notes, will continue to fascinate Americans for generations to come. A fine selection for public libraries and undergraduates too young to have experienced the Nixon years.?Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.