“What it will do is clear the air,” said Ed Nixon, 78, of the just-published book, “The Nixons: A Family Portrait.”

“It’s a very human picture of Richard Nixon,” said Kenmore historian Karen Olson, who co-authored the book.

Making his home in Lynnwood and purposefully never too much of a political figure himself, Ed Nixon said he has, of course, heard the jokes, the rumors and what he called the misinformation, not only about his famous oldest brother, but about his entire family. He acknowledges some people still hate and revile his brother, who died in 1994 and left the White House more than three decades ago.

“It makes me smile … in distress. It makes me sad that they continue to hate what they never got to know,” said Nixon, who is clearly well-spoken and possessing an obviously well-developed point of view.

Instead of concentrating on the Watergate scandal and his brother’s resignation from the presidency, Nixon likes to talk about his brother’s foreign policy, how he opened diplomatic relations with China and ended the war in Vietnam. And if those pro-Nixon arguments sound familiar to some, Ed Nixon further contends his brother does not get the credit he deserves for his domestic agenda.

“He called for energy independence in 1971,” said Nixon, a geologist by training, who believes he may have brought the idea of the finite nature of some of our resources to his brother’s attention.

Still, moving away from politics, both Nixon and Olson seem to think a powerful part of the story of Richard Nixon is how he rose from proverbial humble beginnings to the proverbial most powerful position in the world.

“Basically, I think it’s an inspiring book,” Olson said of the new history. “It’s an American Dream story.”

“What the books says, I hope, is ‘Wake up, the American Dream is not dead,’” Nixon said, talking a lot about hoping to inspire young people, young people he wants to not only look beyond themselves, but look at their lives as a mission and live accordingly.

“Fat, dumb and happy doesn’t work,” he said bluntly, blaming some of the country’s current problems on complacency and, to some extent, a lack of planning.

“One of the strong messages of the book is that we need to get away from government reliance,” Olson said, with both she and Nixon showing strong streaks of conservative beliefs.

“Self-reliance is most important,” Nixon insisted, a trait he no doubt believes his brother possessed in abundance. Nixon said his brother always reacted strongly to the attacks that were made against him.

“I think he acted like a man,” Nixon said.

Following the Watergate scandal, Nixon said his brother resigned the White House for one reason: to avoid dragging the presidency through the muck and mud of possible trials and impeachment hearings. But Nixon quickly noted with deliberate irony that impeachment hearings for a sitting president have happened since then.

For her part, Olson said flatly that Richard Nixon did not authorize and did not know about the burglary into Democratic Party offices at the Watergate Hotel until after the fact.

For Olson, her involvement in a book on the Nixons may somehow have been foreordained. At the age of 13, she wrote a letter to the then-president and was looking forward to a personal appearance of his locally. In the end, she couldn’t attend after undergoing surgery. No problem. Richard Nixon showed up at her doorstep and visited with his young fan for about an hour. He said she was a good writer and encouraged her to pursue writing as a profession. Olson actually met Ed Nixon at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.

Ed Nixon said he shopped his book idea with the usual New York City publishers, but got turned down. Friend and conservative columnist William Safire told him to look locally and he did. “The Nixons” was published by Bothell’s Book Publishers Network.

• Nixon will do a book reading and talk at 11:30 a.m. March 16 at the Q.Q. Bistro, 6512 N.E. Bothell Way, Kenmore. The event is sponsored by the Bothell-North King County Republican Women’s Club. Call the bistro at (425) 486-9441.