Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President

I was thinking it probably took two writers to do this biography of Ronald Reagan for the Our Presidents series just to try and decide how to get everything into just 32 pages. Certainly the first chapter, The Road to Hollywood, is the most atypical in the series, telling how Reagan went from being a radio announcer to a Hollywood actor. However, his movie career is touched on only briefly in the next chatetr, A New Career, as Cynthia Klingel and Robert B. Noyed have to cover how the actor became the governor of California and almost a candidate for the Republican nomination for President. Chapter three, The Road to the Presidency explains how Reagan was elected to the White House, covers the assassination attempt that wounded the President, and describes his basic positions on the American economy and foreign relations. The final chapter, Ending a Memorable Career, focuses on Reagan's second term in office and the issues of Libya, the "Challenger" explosion, and relations with the Soviet Union and their new leader Mikhail Gorbachev. If you are familiar with Reagan's life then it is easy to take issue with some of the choices made here. There is a picture of Reagan as "The Gipper" in "Knute Rockne--All American," and mention of "Bedtime for Bonzo," in which he shows a decidedly comic flair despite the film's reputation as a joke, but there is no reference of his excellent performance in "King's Row," which is the one film those who are curious about the actor who became president should check out. More importantly, the Iran-Contra Affair is essentially dismissed as being "complicated to understand," without an explanation of what the political and legal issues involved were that threatened the Reagan presidency (there is no explicit notion of Reagan as the "Teflon President," although his popularity is frequently mentioned). However, overall Klingel and Noyed provide a solid foundation for understanding the key elements in Reagan's life and presidency. There are other juvenile biographies with more detail, but for younger readers this would be a good place to start reading about the man who was president right before they were born. The first half of the book tends to focus more on details in Reagan's life while the second organizes his presidency into a series of fundamental issues and events. Reagan's political philosophy is covered in the sidebars to those last two chapters, one on Reaganomics and the other on Communism. An earlier sidebar is devoted to Nancy Reagan. Throughout the book, which is illustrated with family and political photographs of Reagan, the margins are filled with Interesting Facts (e.g., how he got the nickname "Dutch" and how the Brady Bill resulted from the assassination attempt). The book emphasizes the idea of Reagan as a strong president who deserved his reputation as "The Great Communicator." At the end it touches on Reagan being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and it will be interesting to see if