Attack on Middle America

Nixon Agonistes By Garry Wills

Houghton Mifflin, 617 pp., $10.00 This is a strange book. Its avowed subject is Richard Nixon; yet its real subject is America today—an America about which there is nothing good to be said, an America seen from a point of view similar to, if not identical with, that of the revolutionary forces intent upon our destruction (the black militants, the New Left, the counterculture). Its subtitle is The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, and it is sufficiently bilious in its view of Mr. Nixon; but essentially its bile pours out not against that self-made man, but against the America of self-reliance, individualism, aspiration, against the America which, unlike the nations of the Old World, has created itself.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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Constitutional Government

Nixon Agonistes By Garry Wills

Houghton Mifflin, 617 pp., $10.00 This is a strange book. Its avowed subject is Richard Nixon; yet its real subject is America today—an America about which there is nothing good to be said, an America seen from a point of view similar to, if not identical with, that of the revolutionary forces intent upon our destruction (the black militants, the New Left, the counterculture). Its subtitle is The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, and it is sufficiently bilious in its view of Mr. Nixon; but essentially its bile pours out not against that self-made man, but against the America of self-reliance, individualism, aspiration, against the America which, unlike the nations of the Old World, has created itself.