“ The questions most often asked about Richard Nixon,” Earl Mazo writes by way of introducing the last chapter of his book (Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait, Harper, $3.95) “relate to his convictions, his political principles, the sort of President he would be….” Indeed they do, and it is testimony to Mr. Mazo’s good faith that he winds up his chronicle of Nixon’s career by confessing, in effect, that the questions are still there.
The book is not, I hasten to add, without merit. It will make absorbing reading for people who, like this reviewer, go for contemporary political lore; who enjoy a recapitulation of yesterday’s headlines in story form, punctuated here and there by anecdotal fillers that didn’t make the papers. That Mazo is plainly a Nixon partisan does not distract unduly from the presentation, and not nearly as much as the author who would feign an open mind.
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