Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 973.927092 REA | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Ronald Reagan's The Notes is a fascinating window into the mind of our fortieth president and the writers and thinkers to whom he turned for advice, inspiration, humor, and hope. Collected by the Ronald Reagan Foundation, the book includes both Reagan's own writing and his favorite quotations, proverbs, and excerpts from speeches, poetry, and literature. The breadth of these notes sheds light on a man who was deeply engaged with the arts, culture, and politics, from his time as one of the nation's most popular actors to later years as one of its most beloved presidents. Known as the "Great Communicator," Reagan sought wisdom from a wide-ranging set of political figures, philosophers, novelists, and poets, including Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as Mohandas Gandhi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mark Twain, and Thomas Wolfe.
While the number one New York Times bestselling Reagan Diaries detailed daily life inside the Oval Office, The Notes encapsulates a lifetime of reflections on work, marriage, and family in classic one-liners such as "Flattery is what makes husbands out of bachelors" and "Money may not buy friends, but it will help you to stay in contact with your children." Reagan's own writing--his jokes, aphorisms, and insights into politics and life--is often surprising and reveals a view of the president that has rarely before been seen.
Historic, illuminating, and deeply captivating, The Notes is a remarkable collection of the thoughts of one of our most beloved presidents.
Author Notes
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911 - 2004 Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911. He worked his way through Eureka College, where he studied economics and sociology. After graduation, he became a radio sports announcer for WOC, a small radio station in Davenport, Iowa.
Reagan enlisted in the Army Reserve. An agent for Warner Brothers "discovered" him in Los Angeles in 1937 and offered him a seven-year contract. He played George Gipp in his most acclaimed film, "Knute Rockne -- All American" in 1940. In 1942, the Army Air Force called him to active duty and assigned him to the 1st Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, California, where he made over 400 training films. On December 9, 1945, he was discharged. During the next two decades he appeared in 53 films.
As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry and his political views shifted from liberal to conservative. He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for conservatism. In 1966, he was elected Governor of California and was re-elected in 1970. For several months after his gubernatorial term ended in 1974, he wrote a syndicated newspaper column and provided commentaries on radio stations across the country. On November 20, 1975, Reagan announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. He lost the party's nomination, but his showing laid the groundwork for the 1980 election. After winning the party's nomination in 1980, he chose George Bush as his running mate. Reagan won the election and was President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. At the end of his administration, the Nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression. In 1994, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He died on June 5, 2004.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 2010, researchers at the Reagan Library discovered a box of index cards containing jokes, literary quotes, and excerpts from speeches written in Reagan's own hand and arranged under rubrics such as "On Liberty," "On War," and "On the People." Rice University history professor Brinkley, who also edited The Reagan Diaries, suggests Reagan began collecting these as spokesman for General Electric beginning in 1954 and continuing until his death in 2004. Readers uncertain if Reagan hated taxes ("Justice O. W. Holmes: "Keep govt. poor and remain free") and communism (Pravda: the communist program is "all embracing & all bloodsoaked reality"), or if he loved God, liberty, and the Constitution (Daniel Webster: "if the const. shall fail there will be anarchy throughout the world") will find answers here. Even the jokes show a conservative bent. The squibs are from sources as far-ranging as Dale Carnegie, Solzhenitsyn, G.K. Chesterton, and even Chairman Mao (on marriage). Admirers will find plenty to admire in these jottings and nothing to change their view of Reagan, but rather confirmation of the vision they already have. 9 b&w photos. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Historian Brinkley edited The Reagan Diaries (2008) and now has at another handwritten artifact recently discovered in the late president's personal archive. It is a collection of note cards on which Reagan jotted quotations by political and philosophical figures in history and his own times plus a separate set of cards with jokes and one-liners on them. Apparently assembled in the course of Reagan's public-speaking career, first as a GE spokesperson, then as a politician, the texts on these cards, Brinkley says, appeared in one Reagan declamation or another. That fact affords insight through this volume into how the Great Communicator spiced up his speeches while also showing readers the note cards as distillations of Reagan's conservative political precepts. While most aphorisms Reagan copied resonated with his views on taxation, the welfare state, and free enterprise, he also wrote down, no doubt for use as foils in his talks, statements with which he would have disagreed by figures ranging from liberals to communists to fascists. Researchable by historians, pleasing to Reagan fans, The Notes certainly will circulate.--Taylor, Gilber. Copyright 2010 Booklist