Years ago in a drugstore near Boston I noticed various news magazines had devoted their front pages to Edmund Morris' new biography on Reagan.  It garnered weak reviews due to his unique style of presenting Ronald "Dutch" Reagan to the world. I finally read the book and found that his use of fictional characters, presented as real in order for the reader to capture the essence of Reagan, does not work.  While at times an "a-ha" moment occurred when I read about Reagan's youthful actions through the eyes of a fictional acquaintance, I was not interested in reading about this character's life, family, problems and future. To take the biography seriously I was asked to pretend. All the while I felt these inclusions were keeping me away from Reagan, which is not the best praise a biography could receive. His insights into how rural, solitary cornfields and swimming shaped this world leader were fascinating, but sorting through fictional characters to get to them was frustrating.

Since the publication of Dinesh D'Souza's book Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man became an Extraordinary Leader in the mid 1990s, the floodgates have opened with a barrage of pro-Reagan books from former aids, colleagues, political pundits and even his wayward daughter. What is needed is another solid, analytical biography about this larger than life president.  Dutch is not it.  Written while Reagan was still alive but moribund due to Alzheimer's, it is a miscalculation.  Morris stated in an interview that his was a revolutionary way of writing a biography.  Some have called it akin to an historical novel.  To write a biography-cum-historical novel on Ronald Reagan might be revolutionary, but from what I saw at the revolution, the essence of Reagan might have been beyond even the considerable talents of Mr. Morris.
Years ago in a drugstore near Boston I noticed various news magazines had devoted their front pages to Edmund Morris' new biography on Reagan. It garnered weak reviews due to his unique style of presenting Ronald "Dutch" Reagan to the world. I finally read the book and found that his use of fictional characters, presented as real in order for the reader to capture the essence of Reagan, does not work. While at times an "a-ha" moment occurred when I read about Reagan's youthful actions through the eyes of a fictional acquaintance, I was not interested in reading about this character's life, family, problems and future. To take the biography seriously I was asked to pretend. All the while I felt these inclusions were keeping me away from Reagan, which is not the best praise a biography could receive. His insights into how rural, solitary cornfields and swimming shaped this world leader were fascinating, but sorting through fictional characters to get to them was frustrating. Since the publication of Dinesh D'Souza's book Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man became an Extraordinary Leader in the mid 1990s, the floodgates have opened with a barrage of pro-Reagan books from former aids, colleagues, political pundits and even his wayward daughter. What is needed is another solid, analytical biography about this larger than life president. Dutch is not it. Written while Reagan was still alive but moribund due to Alzheimer's, it is a miscalculation. Morris stated in an interview that his was a revolutionary way of writing a biography. Some have called it akin to an historical novel. To write a biography-cum-historical novel on Ronald Reagan might be revolutionary, but from what I saw at the revolution, the essence of Reagan might have been beyond even the considerable talents of Mr. Morris.