Michael Dobbs’s King Richard is a superficial book that contributes nothing new to the immense Watergate literature, 95 percent of which is self-serving claptrap. As it is a chronology through the ten months that followed the Watergate intrusion, it has the drama inherent to such a train of events, no matter how familiar the reader already is with them. At no place does the author depart from the accepted and zealously propagated liberal view that Richard Nixon had his moments but was ultimately a neurotic crook. Such a view is only to be expected from a former Washington Post fact-checker. Dobbs makes the obligatory reference to Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, who advised Nixon in the 1950s about coping with anxiety and sleeplessness, to drop the hint that Nixon was not altogether sane. (I had occasion in 1992 to ask Nixon about one of his early biographers, and he said, “You may have noticed that she committed suicide; very unfortunate, but it confirmed me in my view that she was crazy and not I.”)

At no point does the author mention Nixon’s unwavering view that he made serious mistakes but broke no laws.

At no point does the author mention Nixon’s unwavering view that he made serious mistakes but broke no laws. A reader does not have to get very far into this book to realize that this is not an opinion the author shares, but since this work purports to be somewhat biographical, Dobbs owes it to its subject