Nation: Portrait of the Young Nixon

"As a child he was fastidious. 'He once said he didn't like to ride the school bus,' a cousin remembers, 'because the other children didn't smell good.'" So begins an intriguing account of the early years of Richard Nixon in this week's LIFE by Staff Writer Donald Jackson, who spent weeks searching out and interviewing the President's relatives, boyhood friends and old acquaintances. From an early age, Jackson writes, Nixon was "a serious child; he was never a giggler." Nixon's mother recalled: "Most boys go through a mischievous period; then they grow up and think they know all the answers. Well,...