Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Nixon's Shadow"

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Pg. 69: "Nixon's Shadow"

David Greenberg is assistant professor of History and Journalism & Media Studies at Rutgers University. His books include Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image and Calvin Coolidge (forthcoming).

The esteemed biographer-poet-novelist Jay Parini praised Nixon's Shadow: "Digging into a plethora of sources, including print archives, biographies, newsreels, movies, plays,

songs and cartoons, [Greenberg] turns the image of Nixon around like a many-sided jewel, seeing how the light shines differently through each facet."

The eminent historian Robert Dallek, author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, on Nixon's Shadow-- "Groundbreaking....A landmark in Nixon scholarship."

I asked David to apply the "page 69 test" to his book. Here is his reply:

Nixon's Shadow is not a biography of Nixon but a history of his public image. Each of the eight chapters looks, in sequence, at a different group of Americans and the image of Nixon it formed and disseminated in the general culture. I hope that cumulatively these chapters not only add up to a richer picture of Nixon but also tell us something about how image making in postwar American politics has evolved and functions.

Page 69 is from the second chapter, on the 1950s liberals who were the original "Nixon haters" and their image of "Tricky Dick," a moniker that dates to that period. It's arguably the most important chapter in the book, since these were the ones who came closest to getting Nixon right -- even though in the book I am hard on them for the ways in which ideological predilections shaped their views.

It is also interesting that on page 69 I discuss the 1960 election, in which Nixon's image -- especially his five o'clock shadow in the debates against Kennedy -- did him harm. Notably, the title of the book is, among other things, a reference to this "shadow."

Many thanks to David for the input.

For more information and more praise about the book, click here.

Click here to listen to NPR's Alex Chadwick talk with David Greenberg about Nixon's Shadow.

In a recent post over at The New Republic's Open University blog, David discussed the Euston Manifesto and its American counterpart: click here for the story.