It's a masterly achievement of spadework and stamina. Gellman's thoroughness will raise questions about the reliability of other biographers. Gellman blasts Roger Morris for wondering whether a ''Mr. More important, Gellman amplifies the record of Nixon's quotidian legislative chores. He meticulously details Nixon's participation in a key 1947 Congressional trip to Europe, seeing it as an early case of Nixon's leadership in foreign affairs.
New research is valuable, though, mainly if it suggests a new interpretation.
This Gellman doesn't really provide. Perhaps he will in future volumes, but in ''The Contender'' his thesis is basically that Nixon wasn't such a bad guy. So, too, did a raft of pro-Nixon biographies from the 1950's. Hardly a revisionist work, ''The Contender'' takes one side in a well-worn debate. Gellman can be persuasive in Nixon's defense.