In November 1952, it was Richard Nixon, not John Kennedy, who was the boy wonder of American politics.

At 39, Nixon, former U.S. representative and then junior senator from California, had become vice president-elect under Dwight Eisenhower.

		"RICHARD NIXON: A LIFE IN FULL" By Conrad Black Public Affairs ($40)

Despite defeats in 1960 by Kennedy for president and in 1962 for governor of California, Nixon would serve longer in elective national office -- 13¹/₂ years -- than anyone else in American history.

Intelligent, hard-working, ambitious, calculating, brave and insecure, Nixon's long life contained many more than the "Six Crises" he himself wrote about in his first memoir.

In his new biography, Conrad Black describes those battles with vigor, attention to detail, clear writing and, sometimes, perhaps a little too much sympathy.

It's been said that all historians, no matter what their subject, are writing, at least in part, about themselves and their times.

Black, a former newspaper publisher turned biographer, has faced crises of his own. Convicted earlier this year of defrauding shareholders in Hollinger International out of millions of dollars, Black was sentenced last week to 6¹/₂ years in jail.

The government's case rested in large part on the hostile testimony from one of his most trusted subordinates.

It's not surprising then that Black can sympathize with Nixon's problems with his aides. Writing about Nixon's fatal delay in admitting his early knowledge of the Watergate scandal, Black concludes that the president "was paying the price for not having done what he should have done and what most presidents would have done, and for not having condemned the entire sequence of sleazy events ..."

Nixon, he opines, had too much compassion for "well meaning helpers at the expense of his instinct for self-preservation."

Well, no.

Nixon, after all, delivered the "wild exhortations" against enemies that his subordinates translated into action when they approved break-ins at the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex and of a psychiatrist treating a political foe.

It was Nixon, recorded on tape, who discussed the financial costs of a cover-up.

"We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy using any means," he told Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in 1971. "I want the Brookings [Institution] safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in such a way that it makes it look like someone else did it."

By any measure, these are sordid acts. "A Life in Full," however, contains much more than Watergate and resignation in its 1,152 pages.

Black is at his best in describing Nixon's gutsy 1952 battle to stay on the GOP ticket. Accused of using a "slush fund" provided by wealthy Californians for personal expenses, Nixon fought back with his infamous "Checkers" speech on TV, despite the apparent willingness of Eisenhower, who picked him for the vice presidential slot, to let him twist in the wind.

I came away persuaded that Black knows how to write about politics and that Nixon's behavior -- using the funds for political expenses, not personal spending -- reflected common practice.

A conservative on foreign policy with few illusions about the Soviets, Nixon was realistic about the limits of American power. He reached detente with Moscow and opened the door to improved relations with China.

Working with a Democratic Congress, he signed bills ending the draft and creating Amtrak, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational, Health and Safety Administration.

Nixon's relations with the press were testy, one more similarity between biographer and subject: Both loathe working journalists.

Describing the lack of hard news available during Nixon's 1972 visit to China, Black includes a gratuitous slap at two broadcast veterans. Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid, Black writes, "gained some additional renown for themselves because they had walked through the great squares of Western Europe in their trench coats in the wake of Eisenhower's armies ..."

Like the soldiers and sailors they covered, both men risked their lives in combat reporting.

Nixon lived for almost 20 years after his resignation. Methodically and industriously, he refashioned himself into an elder statesman, the author of authoritative tomes on foreign policy and a trusted advisor to his successors.

"He was, for better and worse, the personification of a large section of the American public," Black writes.

At the same time, Nixon's rehabilitation hasn't been complete. While Ronald Reagan remains as popular as ever, no one since 1974 has tried to run for president as the "New Nixon."

On a recent "This Week" Sunday morning gab fest on ABC-TV, Cokie Roberts indirectly reinforced that point. She noted with surprise that one of the current GOP candidates had broken an unwritten rule of Republican politics during one of their many debates: "Thou shalt never mention Richard Nixon."