THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Trying to Grasp the Real Nixon

A clear picture from inside Richard Nixon's White House never quite emerges from the shadows. Now and then there are tantalizing glimpses of a man different from the one generally portrayed, but they are obscured by a manufactured smokescreen that rises from Nixon's doubts about what he does and says and his suspicions of even those who get close enough to watch him.

The President stood in the East Room last week, earnestly recounting to Americans on television how he had told his aides not to pay hush money to the Watergate burglars. But...