Frank Carlson Library

Hailed by the New Yorker as "a superlative study of a president and his presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the first actor to be elected president, turned in the performance of a lifetime. But that performance concealed the complexities of the man, baffling most who came in contact with him. Who was the man behind the makeup? Only...

Ronald Reagan carried a conservative vision of America to the White House, where his administration gave it life. Peggy Noonan followed Reagan to Washington as his speechwriter, and gave his vision voice. As speech writer for George Bush during his Presidential campaign, Noonan dispelled her candidate's "wimpy" image and replaced it with one of quiet strength by coining such eloquent phrases as "a thousand points of light" and "a kinder, gentler nation." In...

25 years after Reagan became president, Richard Reeves has written a new portrait, using newly declassified documents and hundreds of interviews to show a president at work day by day, sometimes minute by minute. This is the story of a bold, even reckless leader, a gambler, a man who imagined an American past and an American future--and made them real. Reeves shows a man who understands how to be President, who knows that the job is not to manage...

In an series of private interviews, conducted over sixteen years with the stipulation that they not be released until after his death, the 38th President of the United States reveals a profoundly different side of himself: funny, reflective, gossipy, strikingly candid. In 1974, journalist DeFrank, then a young correspondent for Newsweek, was interviewing Vice President Gerald R. Ford when Ford blurted out something indiscreet, came around his desk,...

Prologue: The Velvet Hammer -- In the Magnolia City -- The warden's son -- God came today -- A long dark night -- Miracle man -- Out of the backroom -- The asterisk club -- Troika -- Shit detector -- Big leagues -- To the last drop of blood -- The ratfuck -- The dark side -- Morning in America -- Fencing master -- Black Monday -- The handler -- Jigsaw puzzle -- Fly fishing with Shevy -- The curtain falls -- Winners and losers -- Desert diplomacy --...

Presents the life of Ronald Reagan, including his childhood, education, employment, and political career.

Contains Art Buchwald's humorous observations on the Presidency of Ronald Reagan and related matters.