It’s been twenty-five years since the only resignation of an American president, but our fascination with that complicated man, Richard Nixon, seems to continue unabated.

How are we to make sense of his extraordinary achievements, his monumental flaws, the heights to which he rose, and the depths to which he fell? From the day he was first elected to Congress in 1946 at the age of thirty-three until his death in 1994, Nixon was a dominant force in American politics; no American president since the Founders was on the Political stage longer than Nixon. And now, a quarter century after he left the White House, Nixon is the subject simultaneously of the comic movie Dick, and two serious studies: The Contender by Irwin F. Gellman and The Presidency of Richard Nixon by Melvin Small. Indeed, these two new volumes might serve as bookends to their subject’s career: Gellman shows how Nixon was at the beginning, Small shows how he was at the end, and between them we can begin to discern the lineaments of the man.