SOURCE: “The Man Who Would Be President,” in Washington Post Book World, May 3, 1987, pp. 1, 14.

In the following review, Harwood offers positive assessment of Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962.

Richard Nixon marked his 74th birthday on Jan. 9, one of those bittersweet occasions, I assume, in which laughter triumphs over tears. His life invokes both. He has been a major actor in many of the searing episodes of this bloody century and has been a witness to the rest. There was nothing trivial about his victories or defeats; they were on scales more grand than most of us would imagine (or could handle) in our own lives. By the age of 47, his new biographer, Stephen Ambrose argues, “he was the most hated and feared man in America—and next to [Dwight] Eisenhower himself, the most admired and wanted.”

Today, almost 15 years after the dishonor and infamy of his...