"A Visit to Haldeman and Other States of Mind" (1976) was described as "part autobiographical meditation, part elegiac crank letter to the American Republic, part confession and part essay on democratic politics" in a review by "Time". Greil Marcus, in 2002, said that it was one of the best books he had read about American patriotism. In 2017, Dwight Garner in his "New York Times" "American Beauties" column, about "undersung American books of the past 75 years," described the work as "of the finest and least-known books about Richard M. Nixon's presidency and the shrinking American soul..."