Reagan: The Hollywood Years

As a big movie fan (especially of old movies and "old" Hollywood) as well as a politics "junkie", I found this book to be a fantastic read. Not only does the Reagan movie catalogue receive the most comprehensive analysis available probably anywhere, Reagan as an actor is given a serious, scholarly look,and that's rare. Yet, there's plenty of juicy "gossipy" stories too--and a lot of them are told first-person by those who were there as part of an impressive amount of interviews that have never been published before (or at least I have never seen them anywhere, and I'm familiar with several other books about Reagan). The most fascinating thing to me, though, is the long section about Reagan and the Screen Actors Guild. I think a lot of people will be surprised to see how the seeds of Reagan's political ideology were evident during this period of his life. Eliot makes that connection in a really revealing way, and he does it without taking sides. Many of Reagan's speeches and congressional testimony before he was Governor of California, presented in this context, made the book more than a Hollywood bio for me. It made me look at Reagan's life story as one that made more sense, instead of as two wildly different, mis-matched parts. And the amount of research and details are staggering, with tons of new information. I would definitely reccommend this book to anyone interested in Reagan, even those who think there is nothing new to tell.