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The Reagan Diaries Kindle Edition
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#1 New York Times Bestseller
“Reading these diaries, Americans will find it easier to understand how Reagan did what he did for so long . . . They paint a portrait of a president who was engaged by his job and had a healthy perspective on power.”
—Jon Meacham, Newsweek
During his two terms as the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan kept a daily diary in which he recorded his innermost thoughts and observations on the extraordinary, the historic, and the routine occurrences of his presidency. To read these diaries—now compiled into one volume by noted historian Douglas Brinkley and filled with Reagan’s trademark wit, sharp intelligence, and humor—is to gain a unique understanding of one of our nation’s most fascinating leaders.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateMarch 17, 2009
- File size2748 KB
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.From the Back Cover
During his two terms as the fortieth president of the United States, Ronald Reagan kept a daily diary in which he recorded, by hand, his innermost thoughts and observations on the extraordinary, the historic, and the routine day-to-day occurrences of his presidency. Brought together in one volume and edited by historian Douglas Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries provides a striking insight into one of this nation's most important presidencies and sheds new light on the character of a true American leader.
--This text refers to the paperback edition.From AudioFile
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B000RG1ORK
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books; Illustrated edition (March 17, 2009)
- Publication date : March 17, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 2748 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 820 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #631,706 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #269 in United States Local Government
- #516 in Biographies of US Presidents
- #957 in Federal Government
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Dr. Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates in American Studies. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including for boards, museums, colleges and historical societies. Six of his books were named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” and seven became New York Times bestsellers.
His The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 2007, received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award. He was personally selected by Nancy Reagan to edit President Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries (2011). His 2012 book Cronkite won Fordham University’s Ann M. Sperber Prize for outstanding biographies. His two-volume annotated The Nixon Tapes, 2016, won the Arthur S. Link – Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He received a Grammy Award in 2017 as co-producer of Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom. The New-York Historical Society selected Brinkley in 2017 as their official U.S. Presidential Historian. He is on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. He is a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress.
He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and three children.
Early Life and Education
Born on December 14, 1960 in Atlanta, Georgia. Brinkley’s mother, a high school English teacher, was a New Jersey native and his father, a Corning Glass Works executive, was from Pennsylvania. When Brinkley turned eight his family moved to Perrysburg, Ohio, As an undergraduate at The Ohio State University, he majored in U.S. history with a minor in Latin American studies, graduating with a B.A. in 1982. He published his first article in 1983 on the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in America. In the summer of 1980 he spent a semester at Oxford University doing research on George Orwell. Accepting a fellowship to attend Georgetown University studying U.S. Diplomatic History, he earned his M.A. in 1983 and his PhD in 1989. During his student years he worked at used/antiquarian book stores including Second Story Books, Idle Times Books and the Phillip Collection.
Career
Brinkley’s early teaching career included teaching positions at the U.S. Naval Academy, Princeton, and Hofstra. While living in Annapolis he began researching the life and times of former Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal.. At Hofstra University he spearheaded the American Odyssey course (taking students on numerous cross-country treks where they visited historic sites and met cultural icons in including Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, John Kenneth Galbraith, Jimmy Carter, Morris Dees, Ken Kesey, and William S. Burroughs). This class was written about in The New York Times and dozens of other newspapers. Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) wrote a ten-page profile about Brinkley in SPIN magazine after traveling around America with him on the natural-gas powered bus.
His 1993 book, The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey chronicled his first experience teaching this innovative on-the-road class, which became the progenitor to C-SPAN’s Yellow School Bus. The Associated Press noted that, “If you can’t tour the United States yourself, the next best thing is to go along with Douglas Brinkley aboard The Majic Bus.”
In 199x, Brinkley was appointed the Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. During his tenure there he wrote two books with Ambrose: Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (1998) and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002).
In 2005 Brinkley was appointed Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. Besides teaching classes on U.S. foreign policy he published important books on American culture. He edited Jack Kerouac’s diaries as Windblown World (2006) and Road Novels (2007). As literary executor of Hunter S. Thompson’s estate he edited two books of his letters Proud Highway (2012) and Fear and Loathing in America (2014). His work on civil rights includes writing Rosa Parks: A Life (2000) and his Preface for Congressman and civil rights leader John L. Lewis’ book Across the Bridge. Brinkley also wrote fourteen essays for American Heritage magazine from 1996 to 2012 on a wide-range of U.S. history topics such as Theodore Roosevelt’s love of nature, how Henry Ford’s Model T changed the world, Ronald Reagan’s small town Midwest beginnings, photographer Ansel Adams brilliantly capturing Alaska’s wilderness grandeur, and the story of unsung World War II boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins. Click here to read the full articles.
Brinkley has also been actively involved in the environmental conservation and historic preservation community. Over the course of his conservation career, he has held board or leadership advisory roles in support of the American Museum of Natural History, Yellowstone Park Foundation, National Audubon Society and the Rockefeller-Roosevelt Conservation Roundtable. In 2015 he was awarded the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks by the National Parks Conservation Association. In 2016 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service honored him with their annual Heritage Award.
Professional Accolades
Six of Dr. Brinkley’s books have been selected as The New York Times “Notable Books of the Year”: Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years (1992), Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, with Townsend Hoopes (1992), The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House (1998), Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress (2003), The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006), and The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2010).
Seven of his most recent publications have become New York Times best-sellers: The Reagan Diaries, (2007), The Great Deluge(2006), The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005), Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (2004) Voices of Valor: D-Day: June 6, 1944 with Ronald J. Drez (2004), The Wilderness Warrior (2010), Cronkite (2012), and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (2016).
The Great Deluge (2006), was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book award.
Brinkley won the Benjamin Franklin Award for The American Heritage History of the United States (1998) and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot (1993). He was awarded the Business Week Book of the Year Award for Wheels for the World 2004) and was named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
For his work as an Americanist he has received honorary doctorates from numerous institutions of higher learning including Nova Southeastern University (Fort Lauderdale, Florida); Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut); Hofstra University (Hempstead, New York); University of Maine (Orno, Maine); St Edwards University (Austin, Texas); and Allegheny College (Allegheny, Pennsylvania). In 2002 Brinkley received Ohio State University’s Humanities Alumni Award of Distinction.
A side passion of Brinkley’s has long been jazz, folk, and rock ‘n roll music. He won a Grammy Award (Best Jazz Ensemble) in 2007 for co-producing “Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom” and was nominated for a Grammy for “Gonzo”, his collaboration with Johnny Depp on the soundtrack for an Alex Gibney documentary on Hunter S. Thompson. Other Brinkley music projects include writing the liner-notes for Chuck Berry’s last CD titled Chuck and producing Fandango at the Wall with Arturo O’Farrill.
Brinkley is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Century Association, Society of American Historians, and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He is on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. CNN recently honored Brinkley as “a man who knows more about the presidency than any human being alive.”
www.douglasbrinkley.com
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Several things did stand out --
1. I remember how the news media did a hatchet job on his Administration but publicly he usually maintained the high road by treating his media detractors with courtesy and professionalism -- almost as though he was oblivious to them. In private though, it was obvious he was aware of their animosity. But for a right wing bumpkin -- as the media treated him -- he usually was able to manipulate the media against itself. Not too shabby for an ignorant senile old man.
2. The shapings of the major scandal of his Administration was particularly interesting as he touched on efforts to free hostages in the Middle East. Anybody looking for a smoking gun indicating his guilt of an impeachable event will be disappointed -- unless Brinkley edited that guilt out of the book.
3. For a man who preached family values -- and was very devoted to his wife -- he had problems with his own kids. Nothing sinister but it shows that even the most powerful person in the world can feel powerless when it comes to his own family. I remembered the flak George Bush, Jr. got when his twin daughters misbehaved and thought that if we disqualified parents from public service if they could not control their own kids there would not be many parents qualified for public service.
4. Although he was -- and unfortunately still is -- the icon of Republican conservativism, even he had difficulties keeping the conservative movement satisfied all the time. (I say "unfortunately" because the current crop of Republican candidates are too busy trying to portray themselves as the next Ronald Reagan when they should be themselves.) I do not think his successor, George Bush Sr, ever truly appreciated Reagan's hold on the party. The senior Bush may have been better educated and maybe even more intelligent but President Reagan was the heart and soul of the Republican Party. Reagan could hold the party together in ways his successor could not comprehend.
5. Although he had enemies most of the people he dealt with in government were either friends from his own party or friends from the other party. This was still an era where he could battle Tip O'Neil or another Democratic leader at a professional and political level and then shmooze with them in private. They left their differences at the door when it came to socializing. This was true with administrations prior to Reagan's and largely true through George Bush Sr's Administration. But it has been largely cut throat the last fifteen years and both parties share the blame.
I consider the book to be incomplete for a couple of reasons. First, in the interest of conciseness, Douglas Brinkley left a lot of stuff out and provided only a brief summary of issues the President wrote in the diary. This may have been necessary to keep the book to a readable length but sometimes I felt from the summary that there was a lot of interesting material left out and substituted with trivial.
My more immediate concern, though, was the lack of explanation. Brinkley could have footnoted this book to death and fortunately he chose not to. But so much of the book may be incomprehensible to somebody who did not live through that era so there may be much left in that would be meaningless to a casual history buff. I felt Brinkley would have better served the reader by providing a three or four page summary at the start of each year explaining the main issues that are discussed in the diary. For example, he brushed off a casual comment in one of his Saturday radiocasts when he spoke into an open microphone declaring the Soviet Union to be illegal. I remember that to be a funny event that the media and the Reagan detractors blew out of proportion.
The book is quite long - nearly 800 pages in the printed version, and requiring more than 10 hours to read in the Kindle version. Brinkley, the editor, painstakingly retained Reagan's original words, spelling errors and all, though chose to summarize a significant portion of the diary (probably 50%), rather than include a word-for-word rendition. The summarized info is shown in italics. Classified info has also been redacted (shown with square brackets in the text). I started off carefully reading every word, but by about half way through the book, I thought I'd never finish so decided to just skim the italicized text.
This is not an autobiography. There is no historical analysis, no retelling of historic events, no summarization of the issues of the day. For instance, though the Iran-Contra affair is mentioned many, many times, you won't be able to piece together what actually happened by reading the diary entries. Perhaps Reagan was not a deep or introspective thinker, or perhaps he just knew that his diaries would become public at some point, and didn't want to get too personal.
Here are some of my observations from the diary:
He had a modest ego. Even the "Tear Down This Wall" speech in Berlin in 1987 is somewhat downplayed, though he did mention that the speech was warmly received.
He had little respect for the press and believed they manipulated situations and chose what news to present; there are quite a few negative comments about Sam Donaldson in particular.
He had a contentious relationship with Tip O'Neill.
His devotion to Nancy was legendary and he mentioned her absence with longing every time she had to be away from him. He was proud of her work on the "Just Say No" campaign.
He hobnobbed with the rich and famous, particularly Hollywood types.
He loved to watch movies, even the oldies but goodies. He didn't care for R rated or smutty movies though.
He didn't use swear words. He writes d--n and h--l in his diary, and never a mention of the F word at all.
He was sensitive and touched by many of the people that he met with hardships, frequently commenting that he "puddled up".
He made friends with some of the most important global figures of the day - Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Mother Theresa.
His main form of recreation was horseback riding and cutting down trees.
He was inordinately proud of his physical condition, always reporting that he got a good report from his many physical exams. In Chapter 4 he wrote "I'm so healthy I had a hard time not acting smug."
He was very concerned about his approval rating, and mentioned it frequently; though he wasn't always rated highly, his final polls in office gave him the highest rating of any president ever.
He was photographed thousands of times while in office; "photo op" is probably the most commonly recurring appointment on his calendar
He never did learn how to spell Gadaffi (leader of Libya); Quadhafy, Quadafy, Kadhafy, Qaddafi, Quadaffi, Quadafi were some of his attempts.
He made history for 8 years, and strolling through his diary is a great reminder of the world changing events of the 1980's. On his last night in office he wrote "Tomorrow I stop being President." There's no way to know from his diary whether he was sad, excited or relieved at the end of his historic term in office. However, reading his diaries motivates me to look for a biography to fill in where his diary leaves off.
Top reviews from other countries
Feels more like a companion piece.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 7, 2017
One thing that struck me was how much he loved his wife Nancy ... A good read