Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962

This auspicious opener in a projected two-volume life of Richard Nixon carries the California grocer's son from his school days to the vice-presidency and his subsequent failure to win the governorship of his home state. Ambrose, a professor of history at the University of New Orleans and biographer (Eisenhower, etc.) has written a readable, balanced biography of an unusually complex figure. From early on, he shows, the man who became ""the most successful vice-president'' of this century was an ambitious go-getter, also a cynical and nearly humorless loner whose inability to trust others (and heed their advice) cost him the 1960 presidential election. With emphasis, Ambrose attributes Nixon's unusual private reserve and public confidence to his Quaker heritage. The author is especially interesting whenhe charts how, as a young lawyer, Nixon created a national political base out of the Hiss case and the Korean War, then became for nearly three decades the most distrusted, even hated, politician in the U.S. because he ``seemed utterly insincere.'' Photos not seen by PW. BOMC and QPBC alternates. (April)