Sins of the Fathers

It Didn’t Start with Watergate By Victor Lasky Dial Press, 437 pp., $10

Not long after Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency, an enterprising reporter thought to ask a number of America’s leading academic historians whether in their opinion Nixon’s reputation might in the course of time recover at least partially from the depths to which it had lately sunk. No doubt to the gratification of every fellow Nixon-hater who read the resulting story, the learned double-domes were unanimous: The verdict of history would unquestionably be that of our own day, without any modification whatever. Richard Nixon would burn, for all eternity, in his own specially constructed circle of hell.