Rating: 
Summary: THE PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY IS MISSING!!!
Review: THE PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY IS MISSING!!! It's hard to believe, but Edmund Morris--who did a sensational job of bringing Theodore Roosevelt to life in THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT--has done a lousy job of writing a biography of President Ronald Reagan in DUTCH, and instead ends up with a myography, a book that mysteriously includes Morris himself as a character. DUTCH isn't even a biography, it's more like a novel, and it's a bad novel, and a major disappointment to all the Reagan idol worshippers like me who expected so much after all the advance publicity about DUTCH, which should have been subtitled, THE PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY IS MISSING!!! ...
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I don't know much about Reagan. I was a kid for the eight years of his presidency and my opinions and thoughts are based off of the tidbits that family members share or quotes and opinions I pick up in my reading. I intended to change that by picking up and reading Dutch. Unfortunately,I still don't know much about Reagan. I know of his boyhood, that he worked just a couple miles from where I currently reside. I learned about his start in Hollywood and how he was "forced" into politics. I have a general picture of the man whose inability to remember faces and degrading jokes to Gorby are somehow OK in Morris' assessmnet, but after reading 700 odd pages, I felt that too much time had been wasted on Morris' autobiographical attempts (fictional, which makes me all the more irritated). Areas where I was looking for more explanation, were not even mentioned. No reference to Cesar Chavez, sparing references to minorities (ie blacks and American Indians, not just Jews)and nomention of Bedtime for Bonzo. While I am still interested in learning more on this subject, I feel that after pushing through this text I should have been rewarded with more than just the knowledge that I need to find another book to read about Reagan.
Rating:
Summary: A Squandered Opportunity
Review: DUTCH, by Edmund Morris. Random House, 1999. 874 pp. The biographer's task is to compile the facts, utterances, and experiences of a lifetime and, after a thoughtful sifting and weighing of their importance, to draw conclusions and offer insights about that life. By these and many other criteria, DUTCH, the only authorized biography of former President Ronald Reagan, is a strangely flawed and disappointing book Edmund Morris, its New Zealand-born author, has reinvented an entirely new boyhood for himself, and has artificially inserted himself into Ronald Reagan's own childhood. Unfortunately, this "novel" technique generates a great deal of confusion, since there is no clear delineation between fact and fiction. At times, the book also gives an impression of being about Edmund Morris at least as much as America's 40th President. Most obviously, his use of the fictitious young Edmund Morris character is intrusive, and grants the author equal billing with Reagan when recounting their early years. He is also inclined to offer his own opinion on complex issues without marshalling even a hint of evidence in support! In addition, this former ad-writer nearly strains himself trying to impress his literary peers with his erudition (numerous Latin, French and German phrases by page five!) making even the careless reader only too aware of the biographer's intrusive presence. Finally, his professional instincts eventually reassert themselves when he makes a half-dozen or more not-too-subtle plugs for his award-winning biography of Teddy Roosevelt. Morris' worst failing, however, is the fact that his attitude toward his subject is primarily one of contempt, and he reveals an even greater contempt for small-town America, whose values and culture nurtured and shaped the character of Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, for those of us who love and admire Reagan, Morris' contempt is front-loaded: Most of the bitchy and snide references (many worthy of Gore Vidal, who is of course quoted,) are found in the book's beginning. Thus, on page xiii of the prologue: "Half an hour later I emerge from the Oval Office, asking myself for the hundredth time, 'How much does Dutch really know?' " Obsessively, Morris has seized on what he feels to be an apt metaphor for the life of Reagan: The "innocent fool" motif from Wagner's Parcival, which he hammers home relentlessly throughout the book: ("...he would retain a certain worldly innocence through adulthood, making at least one bookish observer wonder if he were not indeed "der reine Tor," the Innocent Fool of medieval legend.") Morris must also fancy himself an economist, of sorts, and dismisses so-called "supply-side" economics with a condescending sneer and the label "peculiar." (Apparently, in the world of advertising writers masquerading as economists, applying the law of diminishing marginal returns to a nation's tax rates is too gauche even to consider!) Contempt for small-town America is revealed in his gratuitously snide application of such pejoratives as "squat," "garish," "ugly," "homely," and "drab," and his characterization of its female inhabitants as "walruses." One can only speculate as to the author's motive for demeaning the memory and accomplishments of President Reagan. Some may suggest that Morris' intent was to portray Reagan "warts and all," as if this biographical effort were the literary equivalent of a Matthew Brady portrait of Abraham Lincoln. A more plausible explanation is that the book is aimed at an audience consisting of the literary "elite" or liberal "intelligensia," whose validation and awards Morris craves, but whose envy and hatred of Reagan are legendary. Although Morris returns frequently to the "lifeguard role" of Reagan's youth, he seems blind to its significance. A lifeguard is the sort who, upon sensing danger to imperiled victims, selflessly dives into the water to rescue them, while everyone else stands around wringing their hands and asking what can be done? While this biography doesn't acknowledge it, (and its author is clearly NOT up to the task,) we owe a debt of enormous gratitude to Ronald Wilson Reagan, who never took his eyes off his charges and won the Cold War single-handedly. #####
Rating: 
Summary: It's OK
Review: I know that Morris had trouble getting into the subject and had to invent a world populated with among other characters a fictionalized self. Once you get past the fact that what your reading is a kind of "faction" its OK.
I learned a lot about Reagan and even developed a degree of respect for him as person (not as a president).
One thing I must say is that if you enjoy a well turned phrase and creative use of vocabulary you will love the way Morris writes this tale.
Rating:
Summary: A "work" a real piece of work. . .
Review: When everybody knows (and Morris has stated on C-Span and in other interviews) that Morris has "filled in" first person reportage created from whole cloth about a profoundly ill subject who could not recall ANY aspect of the "first person" that Morris so blithely slathers across the page. . . Morris has no excuses. He has no subject. He has no facts. He has no interviews with the subject. He has no shame. He HAS money from the thinnest excuse for biography since the average 3rd grade book report. Well, fiction is too kind a term.
Rating: 
Summary: A Missed Boat
Review: It took me nearly two years to finish DUTCH: A MEMOIR OF RONALD REAGAN. I would get 50 or so pages in, then quit in disgust over the much-debated "device" Morris uses of inserting his fictional 'self' into the narrative. Finally, two months ago, I determined to slog through the book no matter what. I finished DUTCH yesterday. I can't help but feeling that Morris missed the boat. Here was a good writer granted access to important events in the Reagan administration, and yet he felt he had to invent characters and situations to tell about it. When DUTCH sticks to standard biography, it reads very well. Particularly interesting is the way Morris handles the Iran/Contra hearings through quotes, notes, and diary entries. Much valid information is presented here, and entertainly to boot. But long-winded novelistic passages about the fictional Morris family swallow up chunks of book and the interest of the reader flags. If I want to read a novel, I'll READ a novel. The bottom line is that DUTCH could have been definitive but certainly is not. Reagan's life and legacy awaits a writer with the ability of Morris--one who will exercise a good deal more restraint.
Rating:
Summary: Controversial writing aside, excellent biography
Review: Having read both of Morris' TR works first, I decided to ignore my friends' advice and go for "Dutch." I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised. Morris CLEARLY knows his subject, having been 'appointed' official biographer by President Reagan himself. His exhaustive scholarly research could only have added to his intimate relationship with the man, and it reflects well in the text. One could argue that Morris took such literary liberties with his writing style BECAUSE he was so confident of his knowledge of Ronald Reagan. To those who disqualify the entire work on the grounds that Morris inserted himself as a fictional character, I think your criticisms are a bit excessive. Morris makes clear where fact ends and fiction begins (oddly enough with ying-yang symbols). I don't think there is a biographer out there who has told the whole truth - they've either overstressed certain aspects of their subject's life, or left others out entirely. If anything, Morris' "Dutch" is an admission by the author of a biographer's inability to tell the whole truth no matter how hard he tries. That having been said, I do have criticisms of the biographical work itself. Morris spends hundreds of pages detailing Reagan's rise to fame and power as an actor and president of the SAG. While interesting, this part of his life received excessive attention, especially when one reads the two or three pages that Morris devotes to the period between Reagan's defeat in '76 and victory in '80. I was especially curious as to how Reagan stayed "in the game" during this period, and was consequently rather disappointed. Overall, a great biography, and an interesting way of delivering it.
Rating:
Summary: Disconcerting at first, but you'll become accustomed to it.
Review: Edmund Morris was the presidential historian for Ronald Reagan. Knowing this, I thought that he was writing a book on behalf of Reagan. Whenever Morris starting inserting his own history in the book (like his going to school overseas or writing copy for airlines), I wondered at insertion of his personal life into the book. This is not why I bought the book. After reading more, I felt that these insertions helped establish perspective on the work. It no longer felt like an 'official' rendition of the Reagan's life. This is when the title seemed to strike me as more apt. This is his memoir of Ronald Reagan. To understand his memories of 'Dutch,' he has to include his own life into the text. It wasn't expected, but I found that I appreciated it by book's end. There are some photos in the book, but not a lot. They seem more coincidental than planned. There are also copious notes in the back for the historians who wish to check every detail. Morris did indeed do his homework. I would recommend this book with the caveat that the reader understands that this is the author's memoir of Ronald Reagan. Although parts seem sentimental, it is a good read.
Rating:
Summary: A Disservice as a History, A Displeasure as a Novel.
Review: Given that Edmund Morris had an unprecedented amount of access to Ronald Reagan and the White House, he had a duty as a historian to write a solid, historical work, impeccably researched, well annotated, and one that could form, at a minimum, a baseline for other future efforts. Instead, the book he wrote is a travesty; a series of ramblings presented from a bewildering array of real and fictional characters. Morris unbelievably writes from the first person -- and writes of times, palces, and events which he could not have experienced first hand, except through his imagination. One never knows whether an insight or an opinion is that of the actual Morris or the fictional Morris whom he invented that went to Eureka College with Reagan in the 1930s. Given this, can one take the quotes Morris includes from Cap Weinberger or James Baker seriously? Legitimate and interesting historical questions Morris raises (did Reagan, the idealistic young Democrat, flirt with Communism in the 1940s?) are ruined because the author does not maintain the appropriate distance. For such an important historical figure as Reagan, this is especially unfair treatment. Morris is trying to make a point with all this -- which is that if you scratch the surface of Reagan, you will find that there is nothing there. But instead of using this to write a legitimate history, he becomes so disillusioned that he can only write this disturbing act of literary and historical vandalism. If Morris beleives that Reagan "was an airhead", he should lay out the facts, back it up with research and quotes, and lay the record bare. This collection of musings, half-truths, and speculation ultimately is an unfair assassination of character. Although Morris is a far bettter writer than Dinesh D'Souza, I am forced to conclude that D'Souza's book, which is a one-sided apologia for Reagan, not only is more accurate but is a better work of history. I am saddened by this book, Dutch, as I have been by few others. Reagan, the American people, and history deserve better.
Rating:
Summary: An important book but somewhat unsatisfying
Review: If you're interested in the Reagan presidency, this book is worth reading, flaws and all. For Edmund Morris, kudos for daring to do something different. For me, the technique failed, please don't do it again Mr. Morris. I read a novel differently than I do a biography, and found myself continually off balance as I read this book. When one reads a biography, one learns not just about the subject, but also about the times and the people who were around the subject. In this book, one is left with considerable confusion about what was real and what was conjecture on the part of the author. It is clear the Ronald Reagan is one of a kind. I'm not a serious student of history, but I don't know of any other great leader, past or present, in government or any other field, with his combination of personal characteristics. It's worth understanding this man better, even if one has to put up with Morris's flawed biographical technique.
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