Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician by Roger Morris (review)

BookReviews 223 restaurant chain. The work cries out for primary sources relating to the pioneering experiencesof the early waitresses. That omission is glaring, especially as the author payshomage to scholars who quite properly demand that written history of the frontier West be expanded to include women and native tribes. As presented, this work contributes little to political, economic, or social revisions challenging traditionally male-dominated frontier literature. There is yet another flaw that should be noted. That is the author's failure to document internally her sources. Long, italicized passages casually attributed to specificindividuals are included without benefit of citation. It would seem apparent thatthe quotations somehow relate to Appendix A entitled "Primary Sources"; however ,detecting which of the seventy-seven persons listed might be properly coupled witha particular passage is a bother, if not a burden, for the serious scholar. Poling-Kempes's volume does have some redeeming features. The writing styleis refreshingly lively, clanging along with a rhythm that matches the sound of the rails. In addition, the author seemingly has brought together all that is know about the Harvey Girls. And, they do emerge as women appreciative of the opportunityto work for the Fred Harvey enterprise. Certainly, the women quoted gained self-esteem and a sense of professionalism from their employment, and, most assuredly,they have been rescued from the image projected of them in the Hollywoodmusical of the same name that starred Judy Garland. MerleKunz CentralWashington University ++++++ RogerMorris. Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of anAmerican Politician.New York: Henry Holt, 1990. Pp. xiv + 1005 and bibliography. As the only American president forced to resign from the office, Richard M. Nixonbears a singular notoriety in his nation's history. His new biographer, Roger Morris, never tires of saying that Nixon's early rise in postwar politics had been "meteoric." Six years after he was first elected to Congress from a basically conservativedistrict in southern California, Nixon stood beside the great war leader, Dwight D. Eisenhower, bathed in smiles and adulation after accepting the vicepresidential nomination on the Republican ticket in 1952.Basking in the reflected gloryof the general, Nixon must have thought himself both lucky and deserving. Sevenyears before, he had looked down from a Manhattan office tower upon the 224 Canadian Review of American Studies same hero making a triumphant return from Europe. Nixon's prospects were then less bright: the Duke law graduate and navy war veteran had been given scant consideration by the law eminences of New York, and he was about to make his way back to Whittier, California, where he would seek to succeed in a rather dreary small-town legal career devoted to wills and deeds. But, it all turned out differently, for better and, eventually, for much worse. Roger Morris tells the story brilliantly in this somewhat overbearing leviathan of a book. Along with most of the academic profession, he is a critic of Nixon, perhaps more devastatinglycritical because he served on President Nixon's National Security Council, until he felt compelled to resign in protests over the president's approval of the invasion of Cambodia in 1970. By the time we near the end of the 866 pages, we are inescapably aware of the author's deep dismay at the whole process of American political combat. Richard Nixon, soon to be vice president, is condemned as the "quintessential American politician," the disgusting product of both unrelenting , amoral ambition and pervasive corruption. Beginning rather too far back, with the rising of the Colorado water in primeval mists, Morris carries the sto:rybriskly foiward, arriving at the citrus boom towns of Orange and San Bernadine counties, early in the new century. Morris finds much to suspect in the "region's bravura," in the "fraud and forfeit" of its real estate dealings, in the hurly-burly of enterprise and cynicism,in the get-rich-quick schemes and teeming frustrations of the lower middle class, where he firmly locates Nixon's father, a failed lemon grower and struggling but eventually successful grocer. Frank Nixon had experienced a hard, loveless childhood, and it showed in his treatment of his sons, impatient, shouting, choleric, punishing. But there was also the mother, Hannah, whd'had married...