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Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by David Greenberg (Author) "Richard Nixon Is Returning to Whittier"so said the banner that decked the streets of the young naval officer's Southern California hometown..." (more)
Key Phrases: statesman image, political image making, image craft, White House, New York, Richard Nixon (more...)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this aptly named study, Greenberg, a Bancroft Prize winner who also collaborated with Bob Woodward on The Agenda, sedulously avoids value judgments about the effectiveness of Richard Nixon's policies, offering instead a kaleidoscopic view of the man's many images: as Tricky Dick, as conspirator, as victim, as statesman, among others. Borrowing Woodward's device of calibrating his subjects through the eyes of others, Greenberg presents the opinions of Nixon loyalists, Nixon haters, pundits from the left and right, mainstream historians, revisionist historians, psychobiographers, the Washington press corps and members of the foreign policy establishment. According to Greenberg, this retrospective shows Nixon to have been the first postmodern president, the first whose image was purposefully manipulated for political reasons and without regard to accomplishments. The author also argues that the key to understanding Nixon is not in "discarding the many images of him... but [in] gathering and assembling them into a strange, irregular, mosaic." But with an impressive number of viewpoints sampled, hundreds of sources quoted and even TV shows Laugh-In and Saturday Night Live plumbed for Nixon references, readers may find the citations overwhelming. Still, for sheer drama, Nixon's career remains worthy of review, from his red-baiting 1950 Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, his involvement in the Alger Hiss perjury case and the infamous "Checkers" speech to the Khrushchev kitchen debate, his China policy and the political drama of the century, Watergate. Greenberg's thoroughly researched book, despite its faults, brightly illuminates the passionate public responses that swirled around one of the most controversial politicians of our times. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Nixon haters, Nixon apologists, and would-be Nixon explainers here receive in Greenberg what has long been needed: an impartial umpire. This is not a biography; instead, Greenberg analyzes what biographers, journalists, historians, and artists have to say about the deeds, dastardly and otherwise, of Richard Milhous Nixon. Greenberg unpacks this commentary the old-fashioned way, by arraigning a writer's assumptions and biases. He parallels this with smart analysis of Nixon's career-long efforts to shape his own image--to his critics the surest evidence of Tricky Dick's unprincipled phoniness, but to Greenberg a case study in a politician's spin-control. Working off the superheated rhetoric produced by Vietnam, radical protest, and Watergate, Greenberg's appraisals produce much discernment and subtle bemusement at Nixon's ever-malleable reputation. There will always be a New Nixon, it seems, whether it's Nixon the crypto-liberal (to historian Joan Hoff); Nixon the epitome of a corrupt, imperial system (to the New Left); or Nixon, "one of us" (to journalist Tom Wicker). An impressively balanced work. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (October 6, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393048969
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393048964
  • Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,070,354 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

    #37 in  Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Communication > Public Opinion
    #78 in  Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( N ) > Nixon, Richard

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Customer Reviews

21 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, September 25, 2003
By MJD1 (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
Nixon's Shadow sheds light on Nixon's life and legacy--and it opens up a fascinating world on the civic life of the United States. It's one of the best books I've read in a long, long time.

What I love about most this book is that it tells Nixon's story through the eyes of his critics and the lens of his detractors. In doing so, Greenberg opens up a whole new way, really, of thinking about our politics. The book marks a major contribution to the Nixon literature as well as a shrewd, detailed portrait of the rise of image-making in 20th century America.

By focusing on the forces that led to Nixon's rise and fall, Greenberg shows us how images in politics aren't simply products created by a candidate--they are, in fact, the result of complex forces in our culture and our politics. This book goes to the heart of our civic life. It is one of the most fascinating take our politics that I've ever had the pleasure to read--and one of the best-written non-fiction books to come down the pike in recent memory.

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Three (Four and Five) Faces of Dick Nixon, October 28, 2003
By Todd S. Yellin "tsyellin" (San Jose, CA , United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Was Richard Nixon the second coming of Hitler or the last great liberal president? Or, most likely, the greatest transformation artist since Lon Chaney? With all the spinning by Nixon and his foes, it may be impossible to ever definitively answer who our 37th president was. David Greenberg's compelling book tracks the many colors of this iconic chameleon. The first couple of chapters do a solid job recounting the Tricky Dicky days, kicked off by the warm (?), conniving (?), populist (?) Checkers speech-- Nixon's first great rebound. But it isn't until the Watergate and post-Watergate chapters that the book really takes off with fresh, provocative insights.

Greenberg escorts us down the twisted passageways of Nixon's psyche, recounting the many news, historical and entertainment sources that painted Nixon as an emotional cripple whose psychotic manipulations and paranoid rants wracked our nation's trust in government. Was that the real Nixon? The following section reviews the media sources, often prompted by the Nixon PR machine, that attempted to recast the by then ex-president as a great statesman who opened up China and held out an olive branch to the Soviets. Perhaps most suprising, and riveting, is the chapter that discusses the revisionist historians who paint Nixon's as the great liberal in conservative clothing-- the man who took the "Great Society" to new heights, shepherding legislation that integrated schools, bettered the lives of Native Americans, and expanded social programs for the poor.

Greenberg while refusing to swallow any of these images whole, uses his keen eye to find the credible core of each Nixonian persona. This is a memorable history that questions history itself, a book that asks-- is it possible to objectively capture any figure from history?

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive and engaging read, September 24, 2003
Seldom does one find such a readable, enlightening treatment of a subject so many of us believe we know so well. Nixon's Shadow documents, in a most engaging fashion, the genesis of a significant change in American political culture. One has not studied Nixon, or modern American political history, until one understands Nixon's many images. Greenberg breaks this ground in fascinating and well-organized detail. The guy can write, too.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Imagecrafting
Interesting recap of the various images of Nixon, some self-crafted, some imposed by friendly or critical onlookers to his long and winding career. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Todd Stockslager

5.0 out of 5 stars Pulitzer Prize Historian: It's "The Best Analysis of Nixon"
I was intrigued about this book when I heard it praised in a lecture by Walter Macdougall, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian. Read more
Published on February 1, 2005 by Ron Sherman

3.0 out of 5 stars Tricky Dick unveiled?
Greenberg is a good chronicler of events and few occasions in Nixon's life, however incidental, is missed here. Read more
Published on February 25, 2004 by Candace Scott

4.0 out of 5 stars Complexity means we much search some more
Greenberg's work is the first I have read that expores the relationship between image and history in an interesting and inviting manner. Read more
Published on February 8, 2004 by Kevin Brianton

1.0 out of 5 stars Another Elitist "Does" Nixon
Here we go again.... It's become a "right of passage"
in the leftist community: if you want to be invited
to the best wine and sleeze... Read more
Published on January 23, 2004 by arc5

2.0 out of 5 stars Whatta A Broadsiding
First and foremost for anyone to examine this book as a Hitler-esk feed bag is as about as ridiculous as it gets. Read more
Published on November 19, 2003 by Anthony Giordano

4.0 out of 5 stars New Light on an Familiar Subject
Richard Nixon was such a major figure for so long a time and has been so extensively analyzed it is hard to believe anything new could be said about him. Read more
Published on November 4, 2003 by Arik Handi

3.0 out of 5 stars Wishy Washy
Did you know that Richard Nixon was a controversial figure? And that there are a large range of opinions about them? Read more
Published on October 30, 2003 by pnotley@hotmail.com

5.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious And Spectacular
Fans of Greenberg's Slate columns know he has a gift for making history relevant and fun. In Nixon's Shadow, he focuses those gifts on one of 20th Century America's most... Read more
Published on October 8, 2003 by mwmccaugh

5.0 out of 5 stars HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE WRITTEN
i get tired of all these old fashioned biographies like david mccullough. this book is a lot more interesting. Read more
Published on October 3, 2003 by chad mureta

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