Rating: 
Summary: Important Contribution--Great Read!
Review: Think you know everything about Tricky Dick? Not only will this book make you think again-it will help you understand WHY it is that you think what you do. The notion that "image is everything" in contemporary politics is by now a cliché. But how, when, where, and why did it become so? And why should you care? This book offers a brilliant and highly original set of answers to these questions. As a contribution to our understanding of popular culture, presidential politics, and memory, NIXON'S SHADOW is tremendously important. That it is also a great read-as welcome on a bus or plane as on a syllabus-is nothing short of miraculous.
Rating: 
Summary: Repetitive and non-conclusive
Review: This book grew out of a dissertation, and has the flaws of all such product: It seems to have one central idea. Different groups saw Nixon according to each's differing political viewpoint of the country. The author hits this same point again and again, as if to pad the book's length.
Greenberg does make a telling case that America's liberals began in the late Nineteen-Forties to feel ambivalent toward the public at large, toward their sentiments of patriotism, laissez-faire worldviews, their inclination for simple, pithy mottos which could be easily used in the cause of demagoguery. Nixon's improbable (to them and to others) rise and re-rise, bookended by John Kennedy's assassination and Vietnam, catastrophically crashing in Watergate, didn't elevate the liberals; it made them simply more cynical, less concerned about the opinions of ordinary Americans: a characteristic that continues, I believe, to this day, which allows the Reagans and the Bushes to get elected without any genuine appeal by the Democrats to the public who might have, in previous generations, voted for them. This liberal enervation that Greenberg discusses is, in my outlook, the best thing to come from reading the book.
Otherwise, his assertion that the image is the substance leads one down the road of no conclusion. Greenberg argues that there are too many prisms through which Nixon was and is seen; that one cannot draw any definitive determination. If that is the case, then I submit that his book is too long.
Rating:
Summary: Ground-breaking and Fascinating
Review: This book is catching fire as the latest, most innovative take on Tricky Dick that has come out in a while, as well as an insightful look at the forces behind today's politics of image-making. The book offers a succession of revealing portraits of Nixon, seen through the eyes of all kinds of different Americans. It is a great read - filled with stories and vivid anecdotes of the former President's rise through politics, starting from small town California, through to the White House and then post-resignation exile. You will not put this book down. Budding politicos, Nixon-lovers, Nixon-haters and non-fiction lovers in general should get hold of it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Insightful and a Great Read
Review: This is a superb book both in terms of its deep perspective on the former president, and because of the light it sheds on politics today. Chock-a-block with fascinating anecdotes, little-known facts and new perspectives on Tricky Dick. It's a fast-paced narrative, but filled with rich analysis and new ideas. Most definitely worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: The Three (Four and Five) Faces of Dick Nixon
Review: Was Richard Nixon the second coming of Hitler or the last great liberal president? Or, most likely, the greatest transformation artist since Lon Chaney? With all the spinning by Nixon and his foes, it may be impossible to ever definitively answer who our 37th president was. David Greenberg's compelling book tracks the many colors of this iconic chameleon. The first couple of chapters do a solid job recounting the Tricky Dicky days, kicked off by the warm (?), conniving (?), populist (?) Checkers speech-- Nixon's first great rebound. But it isn't until the Watergate and post-Watergate chapters that the book really takes off with fresh, provocative insights. Greenberg escorts us down the twisted passageways of Nixon's psyche, recounting the many news, historical and entertainment sources that painted Nixon as an emotional cripple whose psychotic manipulations and paranoid rants wracked our nation's trust in government. Was that the real Nixon? The following section reviews the media sources, often prompted by the Nixon PR machine, that attempted to recast the by then ex-president as a great statesman who opened up China and held out an olive branch to the Soviets. Perhaps most suprising, and riveting, is the chapter that discusses the revisionist historians who paint Nixon's as the great liberal in conservative clothing-- the man who took the "Great Society" to new heights, shepherding legislation that integrated schools, bettered the lives of Native Americans, and expanded social programs for the poor. Greenberg while refusing to swallow any of these images whole, uses his keen eye to find the credible core of each Nixonian persona. This is a memorable history that questions history itself, a book that asks-- is it possible to objectively capture any figure from history?
Rating:
Summary: The Three (Four and Five) Faces of Dick Nixon
Review: Was Richard Nixon the second coming of Hitler or the last great liberal president? Or, most likely, the greatest transformation artist since Lon Chaney? With all the spinning by Nixon and his foes, it may be impossible to ever definitively answer who our 37th president was. David Greenberg's compelling book tracks the many colors of this iconic chameleon. The first couple of chapters do a solid job recounting the Tricky Dicky days, kicked off by the warm (?), conniving (?), populist (?) Checkers speech-- Nixon's first great rebound. But it isn't until the Watergate and post-Watergate chapters that the book really takes off with fresh, provocative insights. Greenberg escorts us down the twisted passageways of Nixon's psyche, recounting the many news, historical and entertainment sources that painted Nixon as an emotional cripple whose psychotic manipulations and paranoid rants wracked our nation's trust in government. Was that the real Nixon? The following section reviews the media sources, often prompted by the Nixon PR machine, that attempted to recast the by then ex-president as a great statesman who opened up China and held out an olive branch to the Soviets. Perhaps most suprising, and riveting, is the chapter that discusses the revisionist historians who paint Nixon's as the great liberal in conservative clothing-- the man who took the "Great Society" to new heights, shepherding legislation that integrated schools, bettered the lives of Native Americans, and expanded social programs for the poor. Greenberg while refusing to swallow any of these images whole, uses his keen eye to find the credible core of each Nixonian persona. This is a memorable history that questions history itself, a book that asks-- is it possible to objectively capture any figure from history?
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