Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan

By Edmund Morris

This book, the only biography ever authorized by a sitting President--yet written with complete interpretive freedom--is as revolutionary in method as it is formidable in scholarship. When Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, one of his first literary guests was Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt. Morris developed a fascination for the genial yet inscrutable President and, after Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984, put aside the second volume of his life of Roosevelt to become an observing eye and ear at the White House.
 
During thirteen years of obsessive archival research and interviews with Reagan and his family, friends, admirers and enemies (the book's enormous dramatis personae includes such varied characters as Mikhail Gorbachev, Michelangelo Antonioni, Elie Wiesel, Mario Savio, François Mitterrand, Grant Wood, and Zippy the Pinhead), Morris lived what amounted to a doppelgänger life, studying the young "Dutch," the middle-aged "Ronnie," and the septuagenarian Chief Executive with a closeness and dispassion, not to mention alternations of amusement, horror,and amazed respect, unmatched by any other presidential biographer.

This almost Boswellian closeness led to a unique literary method whereby, in the earlier chapters of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, Morris's biographical mind becomes in effect another character in the narrative, recording long-ago events with the same eyewitness vividness (and absolute documentary fidelity) with which the author later describes the great dramas of Reagan's presidency, and the tragedy of a noble life now darkened by dementia.

"I quite understand," the author has remarked, "that readers will have to adjust, at first, to what amounts to a new biographical style. But the revelations of this style, which derive directly from Ronald Reagan's own way of looking at his life, are I think rewarding enough to convince them that one of the most interesting characters in recent American history looms here like a colossus."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307791429

Reviews for Dutch

[librisissimo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I assume (with n;o good reason) that Morris is citing his sources accurately, but he seems to delight in presenting Reagan in a negative fashion. Note that Morris makes himself a character in the narrative, but was not actually involved in any of the events he chronicles, a controversial tactic much discussed on publication.I learned a lot about Reagan, and admired much of it; I don't think Morris likes him nearly so well.Compare to his previous biography of TR, a self-proclaimed progressive and omnibiblious intellectual: RR was very nearly the opposite of what Morris approved.

[jmcclain19 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is quite the oddball. I decided to read it after Reagan's passing, hoping to learn more about a President that served two terms in my lifetime yet I was too young to know anything about. Morris takes a tack in writing this I've never seen before. Rather than do a traditional writing of the memoir's of Reagan - he takes a smorgasbord of individuals involved in all stages of Reagan's life and mashes them all together into one fictionalized character that tells the story. Either you'll love that idea or you'll hate it. I couldn't get past it. You never quite know who the fictionalized narrator really is speaking for throughout the book, and for me, you also never know what other sort of license Morris took with the story of Reagan's life. Bravo to him for trying something new, but I didn't particularly care for it - personally if I'm reading non-fiction I want to be sure everything in it's non-fiction, that's the hump I just couldn't get over with this book.

[vyach_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The whole book is told from the point-of-view of a Gary Stu who conveniently and coincidentally runs into Reagan or parallels his life throughout. This self-insertion required the invention of many details; fictional end notes provide a veneer of verisimilitude, but actually make the entire work less trustworthy. I can't really suggest a better book, and I must admit this one is a page-turner, but it's definitely not the definitive biography of Reagan.

[davetherave_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Personally I found this a thoroughly enjoyable read, even though, at 670 pages, with another 70 or so of acknowledgements etc it might be more of doorstop to some, it provides a great insight into the kind of person Reagan was. A worthy reflection on the life of the man who is likely to go down in history as the most popular President the USA has had. That is, until the next Big Spender comes along.

[meredithyvonne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this book after a random road trip through Eureka IL, where Reagan went to college. It's a bit dry, but it gives a fairly honest depiction of Reagan's life. I found his early history to be much more interesting than the later part which focuses on his foray into politics. I recommend this if there's anything you want to know about "Dutch".