One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation (Library of Religious Biography (LRB)) Hardcover – August 8, 2024

This was a sad book to read giving the fact the way its presentation of Nixon's life was presented. Reading many other books on the life, especially his presidency, Nixon was a well accomplished president especially in the field of foreign affairs. When I see the way many other presidents are presented, I'll take Nixon anytime, any day to handle today's affairs.Joe Bidden should have looked at the life of Richard M. Nixon before taking loads of money from other countries. He would have been better looked upon!

Daniel Silliman has blessed us with a unique view of Richard Nixon’s spiritual life which is a picture of a troubled soul who wanted so badly to be accepted by others and Christ as well. Nixon wanted to be considered a Christian and yet he never really wanted Christ. Silliman’s portrait of RN is not only the portrait of a president who went wrong, it is a portrait of ourselves who want a God on our own terms. Kudos to Dr. Silliman!

I've read several Nixon biographies including Evan Thomas's outstanding biography "Being Nixon." I thought that pretty much everything that could be said about Nixon had been said. Daniel Sillimon proves me wrong. The book is not an exhaustive biography but a sustained look at religious influences on Nixon throughout his life. Sillimon captures Nixon's rejection of evangelical Christianity, the evangelical naivety of Billy Graham and other prominent evangelical figures regarding Nixon, and Nixon's inability to revive grace from God or from others. This is an amazing read, especially since we live in a time of evangelical naivety toward another famous politician. Best book that I have read in 2024.

Reading history is not one of my strengths, but this biography is tuned exactly to the things that do interest me about history: people and what it was like to be them.I've been interested in Nixon for a long time—interested in the way you're interested in the giant objects Casey, IL boasts with its highway signs, interested in an "I should check that out sometime" way. I can't compare One Lost Soul to other Nixon bios because I've never read any others.But I found this bio to be really compelling. Nixon's story is told with deceptively simple language—a simplicity that only comes when an author has absolutely metabolized their topic and knows exactly what they intend to say. Silliman writes with a rambling, easy tone that I think might imitate the cadence of Nixon's speech at least a little.This book calls itself a religious biography, and that's fair; I might specify that it is a spiritual-psychological biography, interested at every major turn in Nixon's life in what it felt like to be in Nixons shoes, to hold Nixon's convictions and make his choices. Silliman's portrayal of Nixon makes Nixon's beliefs and behaviors plausible. You can see how he got to his ghastly conclusions from the nuances of his Quaker upbringing.For example, in regard to the bombing campaigns he ordered in Cameroon and Vietnam:--The bombing paused for Christmas, and Nixon, at his vacation home in Florida, noted in his diary that he was lonely. There were fewer and fewer people he could talk to. He didn't try to give a speech about the bombing, either. Who would understand?The air raids resumed on the twenty-sixth, with 120 bombers taking to the skies again. They dropped bomb after bomb after bomb. With each one, Nixon believed he was bringing peace. Bombs were peace. War was peace. Light was darkness. God was the devil.--Other highlights for me were the extensively-documented discussions of Nixon's interactions with religious leaders like Billy Graham—what they expected of him, how he resisted them and clung to a (surprising!) core of authenticity when it came to his own faith, and how they supported him almost straight to the end anyway.I had a great time with this book! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, and thanks to Silliman for his investment in researching and writing it!

I enjoy a good presidential biography, but never have I read one that gives such deep examination to the inner spiritual life of an American president. This book does a good job looking at the multifaceted spiritual influences in Nixon’s life and Nixon’s own response to grace. It is painful at times to watch one man so often spurn the rich grace of God, and yet also sobering to look in the mirror and realize that man is all of us apart from the tenderizing work of the Spirit.