Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly Stupid
Review: So here we go again. These folks who write this trash can't come up with any new ideas. They want to stereotype Reagan as "simple" or "trite" and what they don't realize is that they themselves are as predictable and trite as they accuse Reagan of being. I want to say to this author: Enough already!!!! I know that simple things like honesty, courage, love, character, and fortitude are "out", and chin-stroking, sarcasm, disrespect, and selfishness are "in". Ronald Reagan scared these people because he was everything they deep down wanted to be but couldn't. So they turn to their elite, pseudo-educated pens with a vengeance. I understand that the new generation is here and in my face. Further, I am well apprised that Reagan and his insights were "wrong." We have no need for morality and love and Norman Rockwell remembrances; Our collective American cup runneth over with all good things sans Reagan and his simplicity. We are a nation on a high moral level and we are progressing nicely. Maybe Morris would like a President Springer or Beatty to show us how to live. Regardless, we can rest assured that that awful time called the Reagan era is gone and our future is bright and rosy. God help us all....
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing
Review: THERE HAS BEEN MUCH PRESS AND DISCUSSION ABOUT MORRIS' LITERARY DEVICE. MOST OF IT BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK. SHUT UP AND READ IT! THIS IS PERHAPS THE MOST FACINATING AND AMAZING 'BIOGRAPHY' I HAVE EVER READ. THE SUBJECT ALONE IS AMAZING LET ALONE THE STYLE OF HIS PRESENTATION. THIS BOOK MAY CHANGE THE FUTURE OF BIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS.
Rating: 
Summary: A thorough documentation of one of our last great leaders
Review: Edmund Morris has spent years documenting the life and times of this country's most recent, great leader, Ronald Reagan. Morris spends a great deal of time detailing Reagan's interpersonal relationships with his family and friends. He begins with Reagan's formative years and how his own father, an alcoholic, affected him through adulthood. Reagan's life in Hollywood, and later in politics, is written in elegant prose with honest introspection. Morris, who was granted numerous personal interviews and unparalleled access to a sitting president, paints a historic picture of a man who was long on courage and morality. A man steeped in strengths, yet with faults that manifested themselves in his private interactions with close friends. This book is an accurate read about a President that was one of the most popular men to hold the office, who will be remembered as being responsible for taking down the "evil empire" one brick at a time.
Rating: 
Summary: Fictional character a common device.
Review: The narrative voice of any novel, fiction or non-fiction, is a character unto itslef. What Morris is being villified for is just a varying degree of the same beast. It is obvious from 60 Minutes that Morris cares for Reagan, and the problem that Reagan insiders seem to have is that Morris shows the kinks in the armor of this alleged knight. They hold Reagan up as a symbol of America like the flag: not to be burned, not to be desecrated. Instead of a biographer, perhaps they should have hired a propagandist.
Rating:
Summary: After looking beyond the author's personal insertions...
Review: It was still a valid opinion piece. I think many people have pigeon-holed the merit of the book based on things they read about Reagan that were not flattering.Read it with an open mind and you might be surprised.
Rating:
Summary: interesting technique
Review: Edmund Morris is attempting to get at Truth. Facts are not the same thing as Truth. In this case, Morris found that simply organizing a string of facts did not uncover this mystical, mysterious thing called Truth. Thus, he introduced an interesting literacy device in order to get to the essence of what he wanted to say. An interesting read and I applaud the author for his efforts to find Truth and not take the cowardly way out by simply listing a series of events.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinarily honest and fair bio of a great man.
Review: Mr. Morris's book of Ronald Reagan's life is an extraordinarily honest and fair biography of the greatest president of the last half-century. Edmund Morris has held back nothing and for good reason placed himself at the center of the book at critical moments in Ronald Reagan's early life in order to get a feeling of what was forming the man who would single-handedly and without so much as a single shot would bring down the Soviet Union, the greatest menace to civilization since the era of the National Socialists. Mr. Morris's book will be read and valued for its great insights for many, many years. It's a good history and a fine story of Mr. Reagan. I finished the book in two and a half days and haven't read anything as worthwhile in years. Herb Slojewski, Eagle Rock, California, Friday morning 10/1/99.
Rating:
Summary: Reagan deserves better than this.
Review: It is a shame all those years with Reagan produced this weak "memoir". It emphasizes the trivial, as a gossip columnist would, a weak attempt to be entertaining rather than scholorly. If you want to read a good bood on Reagan, read Dinesh D'Souza's "Ronald Reagan".
Rating:
Summary: Read the book, not the press reaction to it.
Review: I guess I'm one of the few people that have read the book before spouting off on it. I have to say that it's been a long time since I read something this good. I couldn't put it down. The way Morris writes is very well done and I didn't find his new "device" a distraction at all. EVERYTHING that he writes is totally backed up in an extensive notes and source section. Ronald Reagan was an enigma to many, but I feel that this book provides a vivid and intimate look into a very private and strange man. But I would suggest you READ the book, and not just the comments that other people say about it. After reading the book, I can almost always spot someone who hasn't read it but feels compelled to comment on it anyway...including a review right here on Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: Worth a chance.
Review: I read Edmund Morris's "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" a few years back, and thought it was so brilliant that it literally changed my life and the way I thought about history and biography. It won the Pulitzer prize, and won the hearts of Ronald Reagan's advisors, who thought Morris would be the man to write the Reagan Biography. So 14 years later, we have a controversial book. As of this writing, I have only read excerpts of the book in Newsweek, due to the book not being available. But I will give this book a chance. Biography is subjective. We all have biases, and a historian can slant a text. In war, history is written by the winners. Writers who create a new paradigm may not be understood immediately, but I have enough respect for Morris's TR book to at least give him a chance. President Reagan would often in speeches quote some dramatic story from his life, and reporters would later find out that the experience was from one of his movies. With Reagan, fact and fiction blurred. Perhaps Morris is writing a life that mirror's that aspect of Reagan's life. Happy reading.
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