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In The Arena: A Memoir Of Victory, Defeat And Renewal

Richard M. Nixon
Reviewed by By Gaddis Smith
Fall 1990
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Richard M. Nixon
Simon & Schuster
1990
384 pp.
$21.95

Here is the literary Nixon at his best: a hard-nosed Polonius extolling the uses of adversity in a world full of enemies; uncompromising defender of himself as injured victim; disparager of journalists, historians, political scientists and educators in general; voice of caution on dealing with the Soviet Union whose military forces, he believes, "while leaner, are stronger than when Gorbachev came to power."

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