Mark Feeney, a writer, editor, and reviewer at The Boston Globe since 1979, won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. He has written for The New Republic, The American Scholar, and other publications. A lecturer in American Studies at Brandeis University, he has also taught at Princeton, Yale, and Brown Universities.
"Nixon at the Movies hits home from the start, when Mark Feeney
draws out the Nixon in Fred MacMurray's Walter Neff in Double
Indemnity--as for the rest of the book he will, along with
countless other characters, draw the Neff out of Nixon. Feeney is
as playful as he is determined, and this book is as infectious as
David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film--and as like-minded
people disagree over movies more than anything else, people will be
arguing over Nixon at the Movies as much as, for more than half a
century, the country at large has been arguing about Nixon."
--Greil Marcus
"Exploiting the most recent scholarship on US political culture and
connecting this learning with perceptive readings of scores of
popular films, Feeney captures both the spectacle and the pathos
associated with Nixon's rise and fall. Alongside Gary Wills's Nixon
Agonistes, this work merits a place as one of the two most
insightful books yet written on a character who never ceases to
fascinate."-- "Choice"
"Feeney is the former literary editor of the Boston Globe, and is
not only thoroughly conversant with the cinema, but with American
popular entertainment generally. He has also made himself familiar
with every word written by and about Nixon, and the eleven closely
packed chapters of Nixon at the Movies juxtaposes different stages
of the man's fascinating career with a series of "alternate [sic]
Nixons" as presented by various films and film stars, the majority
of them from the period 1940-70. . . . Throughout this audacious
book, one comparison or analogy brings up another in such a manner
as to invite re-reading. What may be called Nixon's Hollywood years
have been made memorable by the creative fantasies of Mark Feeney,
right there with him at the movies.--William H. Prichard, Times
Literary Supplement"
--William H. Pritchard "Times Literary Supplement" (1/14/2005
12:00:00 AM)
"In Nixon at the Movies, Mark Feeney has given us a
thought-provoking and truly original book--a work filled with
incisive insights into a fascinating figure."--Robert A. Caro
"Mark Feeney, a reporter and editor at the Boston Globe, takes up
the 37th president's fondness for the silver screen in his very
readable Nixon at the Movies, which is somewhat mysteriously
subtitled A Book About Belief. Mr. Feeney's theme, however, is far
wider than Nixon and the films he watched, as surprisingly
interesting and entertaining as that subject turns out to be in Mr.
Feeney's hands. . . . Rather, the author uses the movies and the
president as the basis for a broader look at America and its
history in Nixon's time, a very big subject indeed. Nixon at the
Movies becomes a social and cultural history of the United States
in the mid-20th century."--Steve Goode "Washington Times" (1/2/2005
12:00:00 AM)
"Movies and Richard Milhous Nixon can each tell us a lot about
America. In this sui generis study--combining film analysis, social
history, psychological observation, and political biography--Mark
Feeney reminds us that Nixon and the movies can also tell us a lot
about each other. It will take further decades fully to understand
the subliminal life of RMN. Here's a great beginning."--Kevin
Starr, author of Americans and the California Dream series
"Feeney persuasively shows that studying Nixon and the movies makes
perfect sense. . . . Nixon at the Movies is a rewarding book for
those interested in assessing the relationship between politics and
the movies and, more specifically, for readers intrigued by the
multifaceted connections between Richard Nixon and the Hollywood
that he was both fascinated by and, at times, despised."--Charles
Maland, Cineaste--Charles Maland "Cineaste"
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