SOURCE: A review of Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, in Historian, Vol. 55, No. 2, Winter, 1993, pp. 372-73.

In the following review, Giglio offers positive assessment of Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.

Bryce Harlow once compared Richard Nixon to a cork: “Push him down and he pops right back up” (583). The enduring resiliency of Nixon is one of the central themes of Ruin and Recovery, the concluding segment of Stephen E. Ambrose's three-volume biography. He covers the “peace with honor” settlement in Vietnam, the Yom Kippur War, Nixon's fascination with China, détente with the Soviet Union, the Watergate crisis, Nixon's exile, and his recovery.

On domestic matters, Ambrose rightly focuses on the national obsession with Watergate, which, of course, cost Nixon his presidency. Largely through the use of White House tapes, Ambrose documents Nixon's complicity in the cover-up and his abuse of power. Like other scholars, he portrays Nixon...