Items related to Contender: Richard Nixon: The Congress Years, 1946-1952
The definitive account of Richard Nixon's congressional career, back in print with a new preface
Unsurpassed in the fifteen years since its original publication, Irwin F. Gellman’s exhaustively researched work is the definitive account of Richard Nixon’s rise from political unknown to the verge of achieving the vice-presidency. To document Nixon’s congressional career, Gellman combed the files of Nixon’s 1946, 1948, and 1950 campaigns, papers from the executive sessions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and every document dated through 1952 at the Richard Nixon Library.
This singular volume corrects many earlier written accounts. For example, there was no secret funding of Nixon’s senate campaign in 1950, and Nixon won universal praise for his evenhandedness as a member of HUAC. The first book of a projected five-volume examination of this complex man’s entire career, this work stands as the definitive political portrait of Nixon as a fast-rising young political star.
Unsurpassed in the fifteen years since its original publication, Irwin F. Gellman’s exhaustively researched work is the definitive account of Richard Nixon’s rise from political unknown to the verge of achieving the vice-presidency. To document Nixon’s congressional career, Gellman combed the files of Nixon’s 1946, 1948, and 1950 campaigns, papers from the executive sessions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and every document dated through 1952 at the Richard Nixon Library.
This singular volume corrects many earlier written accounts. For example, there was no secret funding of Nixon’s senate campaign in 1950, and Nixon won universal praise for his evenhandedness as a member of HUAC. The first book of a projected five-volume examination of this complex man’s entire career, this work stands as the definitive political portrait of Nixon as a fast-rising young political star.
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About the Author:
Irwin F. Gellman is an independent scholar and the author of five books on American presidents. He lives in Parkesburg, PA.
From Kirkus Reviews:
A meticulously researched revisionist account (the first volume of a projected three) of Richard Nixon's public career, from a Putitzer-winning author (Secret Affairs, not reviewed). After Nixons resignation from the presidency in 1974, it was popular to argue that the character flaws that emerged in the Watergate crisis were evident in his first political campaigns and his tenure as a congressman and senator. Not so, contends Gellman (Modern American History/Chapman Coll.). Basing his conclusions on Nixon's recently declassified personal papers, Gellman concludes that the popular image of Nixon as a ruthless liar and conniver who rose to national prominence through irresponsible Red-baiting is actually a myth. Instead, Gellman argues, Nixon was ``a success story in a troubled era, one who steered a sensible anticommunist course against the excess of McCarthy and other extreme right-wingers.'' Charges, still widely believed, that Nixon smeared Jerry Voorhis in his 1946 congressional campaign and Helen Gahagan Douglas in his 1950 Senate campaign are false, Gellman asserts, born of partisanship and unfairness. Instead, both campaigns were divisive but ``hard-fought and deeply emotional'' on both sides. Gellman traces Nixon's involvement in the Hiss-Chambers case, which first brought him national prominence, his rapid rise in the national GOP organization as a senator who focused on the issues of communism and the Korean War, and the 1952 nominating convention in which he suddenly emerged as a dark horse vice-presidential candidate. Arguing that Nixon's nomination was the culmination of several political forces, including the high profile Nixon earned in the Hiss case, Gellman counters the widespread notion that Nixon manipulated his way to the 1952 nomination. Nixon had no managers, he points out, and Dwight Eisenhower had expressed interest in capturing the vote of young people with a youthful running mate. The 39-year-old Nixon seemed to fit the billhe was ``young, patriotic, articulate, and dependable,'' and in Ike's view became the logical choice for the ticket. A substantial contribution to Nixon scholarship. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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- PublisherDiane Pub Co
- ISBN 10 0756760097
- ISBN 13 9780756760090
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages590
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