Best Books About Reagan

From my colleague, Lexington Green at Chicago Boyz:

Best Books About Reagan

ChicagoBoyz will be hosting a roundtable discussion to celebrate the centenary of the birth of President Reagan, the week of February 6th 2011.

In the meantime I would like to get the views of our contributors and readers on what are the best books about Reagan, the Reagan presidency, the Reagan era. Please leave comments with your favorites.

I note that President Obama was recently reading Lou Cannon’s book The Role of a Lifetime, which is supposed to be very good.

I have read and enjoyed several books about Mr. Reagan, his presidency and his era. I will restrict myself to one favorite. If I had to pick one, I would give the palm to Peggy Noonan’s book What I Saw at the Revolution. Used copies are available for a penny. This book captures the impact Mr. Reagan had on our national morale, which is not always captured in other writings about him. I say this despite still being mad at Ms. Noonan about her unforgivably uncritical response to Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

I am currently reading John O’Sullivan’s book, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. I am about one third done with it and it is excellent.

As I said in the comments section at Chicago Boyz, I concur that Cannon’s The Role of A Lifetime and Noonan are the place to start.

There was a prolific outpouring of memoirs by former members of the Reagan administration in the years during and after his time as president. I think we can even divide the lit into books about (or by, at least nominally) Ronald Reagan and those about his administration.

Here are some of my recs….

On Ronald Reagan:

An American Life: The Autobiography

Reagan: In His Own Hand

The Reagan Diaries

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