Rating: 
Summary: A hugely disappointing piece of junk
Review: Morris' book is an insult to all of us who waited for years to read the authorized Reagan biography. Instead, we got a historical novel which tells nothing about Reagan beyond the fact that he was difficult to get to know. Well, lots of people are like that, but the job of a biographer is to work at explaining what a person is like despite the difficulty of doing so. Morris instead gives up on this task and gives us a pretentious, quasi-literary/poetic evocation of Reagan, which I could have written myself using already-available sources. Where is the evidence of the hundreds of hours of first-hand observation that Morris had of the Reagan White House? Not in this book. I tried to give Dutch no stars, but Amazon wouldn't let me, so the one I gave to it is more than it deserves. Read McCullough's Truman for an example of a well-researched and well-written biography, and don't waste your time or money on this piece of junk.
Rating: 
Summary: I finally have to agree, a great disappointment.
Review: Unlike many people, I waited until I read the last word of thisbook to make my judgment.Mr. Morris is a beautiful writer--he verymuch has a gift with a pen. The material is very much there, but he essentially failed to present it as it needed to be. If only the rest of the book were as good as the prologue. Readers would be better advised to search on Amazon's out-of-print search for President Reagan's autobiography, "An American Life" or, better yet, Lou Cannon's books about Reagan. As for this one, wait until it hits the remainder bins. I hope Mr. Morris can redeem himself with the second volume of his life of Theodore Roosevelt.
Rating: 
Summary: focusing on early memories
Review: I read the only the first two chapters. I am a NYS Psychologist who specializes in dealing with and interpreting early memories. Mr. Morris delineates many of the President's screen memories. From what I have been told, the author sees Mr. Reagan's psychological matrix as being one of being a "rescuer". My analysis reveals a much more complicated personality: Mr. Reagon appears to have a psychological matrix of being threatened with death, then being confined, and then saying 'I'm out of here.' This last division of his psychological blueprint seems most important. For the last twenty years or so, he has become more and more senile... which in my opinion is an example of his being 'out of here.' The book is extremely well-written and riveting. The only downside, is that at times, the author confuses his life with the President's life.
Rating:
Summary: Dutch a literary tragedy
Review: Edmund Morris calls his Reagan bio "Dutch: Memoir of Ronald Reagan." It should be titled "Dutch: A Literary Tragedy." Since reading "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" years ago I was thrilled to hear that Morris was Reagan's "authorized" biographer. "TR" was simply non-fiction prose you could not put down. It won Morris the Pulitzer. No chance with "Dutch." The "imaginary figure" totally screws up the story. It is so distracting that one wants to toss the book aside and review "An American Life." That auto was excruciatingly boring, but at least you could discern the fact from the fiction. Although I admire Reagan more than any other person, I fully realize that he did not spring full grown and all wise from Zeus' head. So the facts presented by Morris, flattering or unflattering, didn't cause me concern. The question became as I read: which are the facts and which is the fiction? Who gives a damn about this "imaginary figure" that takes up so much space and continually taunts "sort this out, if you can." Why not present the story clean and straight as was so well done in "TR?" I think I know the answer. Morris succumbed to hybris at its worst. It seems to me that he decided to use his position to really be "artsy." He was going to write the book for the Times Review instead of for history. He succeeded. No Pulitzer for this one. Just a lot of disappointed people that wanted a measure of the man by someone we thought had the ability to do it.
Rating:
Summary: Morris bring the political biography to a new level.
Review: It may take some further time and space to fully appreciate this book, but this is an outstanding work which can be read on several levels. There is some place in this work, perhaps after about 200 pages, when the mist lifts and the book comes sharply into focus. Morris takes us into the life of Ronald Reagan as a view of the development of the nation. Worth the read but take your time.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally, A Balanced Description of Reagan the man
Review: This book is an interesting book on the real Ronald Reagan. There's no conservative spin machine going on here. The author is a person who spent years personally observing the behavior of Reagan. You are left with a real sense of how much acting this man did in his role of president. How sorry it is for the country that this man was getting senile while "serving" the country. This book presents a picture of Reagan that conservatives can be expected to try to discount as possibly being true. A good book is a good book and this is one of them. This is a book worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: The Fall of Edmund Morris
Review: "The Rise of TR" was one of the best biographies I had ever read. Is it possible the same man wrote "Dutch"? The use of the Faux Edmund Morris does nothing to illuminate Reagan. Indeed it obscures the subject and is a constant, annoying distraction. The format of the second half betrays a writer unable to weave illuminating notes into a coherent narrative. Still there are flashes of insight and brilliance and some of the set pieces are magnificent. Yet the whole is unsatisfying. Morris is not content to describe and analyze a remarkable life. No, he must "get inside" Reagan and report every detail of the author's real and imagined contact with his subject. Unfortunately, Reagan and especially his presidency get short shrift. On his book tour, Morris attempted to justify his approach because a conventional biography would be boring. On the contrary, the most boring parts of this book are the travails of Morris's imaginary self, friends and family. On the whole, a terrible disappoinment from a formerly capable author. I have no interest in reading Morris's upcoming book on TR's presidency.
Rating:
Summary: just horrid
Review: Mr. Morris is great writter but this book is unreadable. One can not understand the frist chapter of this work and it gets worse from there. There is one chapter the Bittberg/ Bergan Belisen trip that it insightful. However this is more then counter balanced by the 100 or so pages of incoherant nothingness. Morris if in search of a way to tell the story could have used a frist person approach like robert graves in I Cludius, or mybe non liner structure like Stanly Donan movie "two for the road." Insteed we get a fly on the wall point of view, which would ok but the fly has a son, and we also get a son of the fly on the wall view of Reagan.
Rating:
Summary: How could Edmund Morris be so thick?
Review: With 'Dutch', Edmund Morris has displayed his enormous capacity for scholarship as well as his sensitivity for the human condition. It is therefore all the more puzzling that after this convincing 800 plus page account dedicated largely to the proposition that RR lacked an inner world, Mr. Morris is able to maintain his conviction that RR's present condition is to a large extent due to his fall from a horse. Is Mr. Morris dissembling or is he truly lacking insight?
Rating:
Summary: very favorable, this is a fascinating and honest book
Review: This is a mesmerizing book, and the reader will soon see that Mr. Morris has been scrupulous about revealing his research process. Many biographers use the conventional biographic technique to tell the reader what is essentially their personal version of the life. While Morris's daring method may not be entirely successful, it does not interfere with or distort what he has observed or been able to learn about Reagan. His brilliant writing and unusual method give you a sense that you are learning more about Reagan than you would in the typical "he did this, then he did that, that after that he did that, too" biography. Dutch is subtitled A Memoir. It is a portrait, and a fascinating one.
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