Richard Nixon: The Life

John Aloysius Farrell was born and raised in Huntington, New York and suburban Washington, D.C. He graduated from the University of Virginia and embarked on a prize-winning career as a newspaperman, most notably for The Denver Post and The Boston Globe. He covered every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2012, two wars and the troubles in Northern Ireland. He moved to Washington for the Globe and served as White House and congressional correspondent and Washington editor. He has also driven an ice cream truck, shined shoes, waited tables, cared for the animals in a medical laboratory, worked as a construction worker, labored on an Israeli kibbutz and served as a gallery guard at the Masters golf tournament. In 2001 he published “Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century,” a biography of the late Speaker of the House which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. An excerpt was included in “Pols: Great Writers on American Politicians,” a 2004 anthology edited by Jack Beatty. Farrell’s biography of the great American defense lawyer, “Clarence Darrow: Attorney For The Damned,” won the 2012 Los Angeles Times book award for the best biography of the year. His new book, “Richard Nixon: The Life” is a biography of our most controversial president.