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Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan

3.3 of 5 stars 3.30 · rating details · 795 ratings · 80 reviews

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 fasc...more 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."(less)

ebook, 912 pages

Published October 19th 2011 by Modern Library (first published January 1st 1999)

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Jan 26, 2008 Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Edmund Morris caught a lot of shit for writing this book. Yet, I for one, thought it was one of the best political biographies ever. Reagan was one of those guys defined by public life; he had little use for introspection, personal relationships etc. He was truly most comfortable and at home in the limelight. A quote from the book to illustrate the point:

"Decades before Alzheimer's clouded Reagan's mind, he showed a terrifying lack of human presence. "I was real proud when Dad came to my high s...more

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Oct 14, 2008 Rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People with a higher tolerance for fanciful delivery of information than I have

Shelves: read-part-of, nonfiction

I read quite a bit of this book several years ago but all I can really remember is having to stop because I found the business with the fictional narrator so weird and confusing. It's like that book The Devil in the White City that everyone loves so much. I can't read stuff like that because I need to have a clear idea of where the research ends and the fancy begins.

Ronald Reagan is definitely one of the most fascinating figures I can think of. Somehow he managed to make quite an impression on m...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Mike rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was inspired to read this book about Ronald Reagan, my favorite president in my lifetime, by everything that I had read about Edmund Morris and his exalted biography of President Theodore Roosevelt.

When I first began reading the book, I read the publisher's note and the comments made by numerous people. It was evident that the book was controversial, but I still fully expected to be reading an excellent biography about an excellent president.

You can imagine the depths of my disappointment wit...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Frederic rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

That a man of reserved and gelid Amour Propre should be remembered as the most beloved President of the last century is only one of the mysteries that Edmund Morris plumbs in this very idiosyncratic but interesting biography of the aptly named Great Communicator...ironically,those who seek to claim his mantle today are ignorant of,or choose to forget,his record(as opposed to his rhetoric)as a pragmatic politician who made abortion more available,raised taxes,increased the debt ceiling more than...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Bev rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

Worst biography I've read. Morris doesn’t respect President Reagan, in fact shows great disdain for him on nearly every page. It was apparently written for the entertainment generation: it is crafted into screen plays and Saturday Night Live entertainment which means it’s not credible. And Morris deems he is important enough to tell his whole life story simultaneously with Reagan’s. I kept reading it because this is the authorized biographer who was allowed access to all of Reagan’s papers, jour...more

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Sep 18, 2007 Marlene rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this a bit difficult to read. The author was trying to be clever, but I sometimes felt like it was an autobiography rather than a biography of President Reagan. However, there certainly are some interesting insights into Ronald Reagan.

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Aug 13, 2011 Mel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: us-presidents

Many reviewers have been dismayed that Morris injected himself as a fictional character in the first half of the book. Those that criticize the method as being dishonest and difficult to follow are clearly not paying attention. I suspect that most negative reviewers would prefer to worship at the altar of their perfect President and cannot abide any criticism of their God and his wife.

Morris was allowed unique access to the inner working of the White House and accompanied Reagan's entourage to t...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Linda Appelbaum rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was an audio book for me and I am not sure I like a biography of an American written and read by someone so completely British! That aside, I'm not so sure I have a better knowledge of Ronald Reagan now than I did before except that he was a very morla, black and white kind of person, stubborn, was once a life guard and saved many lives, really had no warm relationship with his children and was utterly worshiped, protected and controlled by Nancy. It just seems that with all the access Edmu...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Mrs. E rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, 2012-books

It is a very different approach to writing a biography. Morris essentially invented a character of himself and inserted it into Reagan's life. Overall, it made the book a bit more interested and added a color that some biographies seem to be missing. My only complaint is that he spent so much time talking about "himself" when it wasn't even really himself. It just seemed odd. But this book does give a great background of Reagan's overall personal life. He doesn't go into as much detail on issues...more

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Jan 25, 2009 John rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone suffering from insomnia

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. The author injecting himself into the story as a fictional character was an egotistical and awkward attempt to insult the President. Very cowardly. Once I got my equilibrium after the initial confusing first couple of chapters, it was obvious to me that this book was less to do about Reagan, and more to do with the author's oversized ego.

Mr. Morris wrote a critically acclaimed book about Theodore Roosevelt. After reading this disaster, not sure t...more

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Sep 07, 2012 Steven rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Chapter for chapter, page for page, this is the single daffiest nonfiction work I have ever read from a respected author.

Edmund Morris, author of widely praised books about Theodore Roosevelt, was given a free hand and direct access to prepare a biography of Ronald Reagan, and apparently found himself in over his head. In fact, judging from this weird amalgam of memoir, biography, and melodramatic fiction, Morris lost his mind.
Even Reagan's admirers acknowledged the man's often spooky lack of affect, and his ability to speak utter nonsense with the utmost conviction. Maybe Morris, unable to get a handle on this affable sphynx, suffered a lapse similar to what Miss Quested experienced in the Marabar Caves scene from A Passage to India. At any rate, this Pulitzer-winning historian decided that the best way to tell the story of Ronald Reagan was to make a fictionalized version of Edmund Morris one of the players. The Faux Morris is present at all sorts of events the real Morris never witnessed, and in the most deranged scene it is revealed that the youthful Reagan, while on lifeguard duty, saved the Faux Morris from drowning.

During my time as a newspaper editor, I became aware of a syndrome in which a novice reporter -- otherwise very smart -- would panic and decide that instead of writing a standard news story, instead attempt what he thought was a brilliant new approach that yielded deeper truths than mere pyramid style could contain. I had to talk a couple of these tyros down from the trees and it wasn't pretty, but they eventually realized that they had simply clutched and needed to calm down.

Unfortunately for Edmund Morris, too much money, time and prestige had been invested in Dutch to allow for such a graceful exit, and the book now exists like a crazy relative chained in the attic of an otherwise distinguished career. Fortunately for us, journalist Lou Cannon did the job Morris should have done with President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, and that will have to stand for now. (less)

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May 09, 2012 Duane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Highly controversial not just for his "fair and balanced" approached to the much revered president but also for the author's literary technique.

The technique of inserting the author into the story in a sort of Dante-esque quality is a little odd for a modern biography. But Morris could be excused because he was given unprecedented access to Reagan while he was running the country. In the later chapters when Morris actually "was there" watching history unfold, he offers an intriguing perspective...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is not going to be a way for me to write this review well, so bear with me while I muddle through.

I bought this book a couple of days after Reagan's death in 2004 from Borders in Springfield, Missouri, along with a city guide of San Francisco and a copy of "On the Road." I bought them for the trip to California, and packed them along with my entire collection of Natalie Goldberg and my heartsick copy of "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." I found that I had wanted to attend Reagan's funeral, and w...more There is not going to be a way for me to write this review well, so bear with me while I muddle through.

I bought this book a couple of days after Reagan's death in 2004 from Borders in Springfield, Missouri, along with a city guide of San Francisco and a copy of "On the Road." I bought them for the trip to California, and packed them along with my entire collection of Natalie Goldberg and my heartsick copy of "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." I found that I had wanted to attend Reagan's funeral, and why didn't he die just three weeks later when I could have made a Southern California stop.

Yes, I admired Reagan. I never got the chance to vote for him--my first voting opportunity was Clinton, and I didn't like Bush--but I have to admit that I loved Reagan's personae. I never knew much about his politics; I was eight years old when he took office and sixteen when he left. But he was comforting. And maybe the fact that he was President during those years of my life made him the FDR of my days, it's hard to say.

When I arrived in California I was lucky enough to live in the South Bay at an apartment with a pool and at a location two train stops from Palo Alto's Stanford Theater. That summer Stanford Theater was featuring all of the movies of Ronald Reagan--I know that I saw two, but the only one I remember was "Kings Row." Despite the fact that I was raised on classic movies my parents never watched Reagan's films (I have a strong suspicion it was because they didn't like him as much as I did), so I was seeing him young for the first time, an unnerving experience. I saw the movies and tried to read the book, but the biographer seemed to be over my head, like Henry James or something, and I gave up. I also gave up on Kerouac and picked up "The Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and Goldberg books instead--all that heavy literature depressed me when I was so homesick.

A couple years back and millions of heartbeats later, I tried again, making it about a hundred pages farther than I did the first time. Still blech. The book is written from a fictional premise with facts, something a little hard to deal with when I was sorting out a broken bone and something even more difficult to explain now, but all I can say is, that with the complete concentration I can afford these days, it finally made sense this time. I'm sure my smarter friends would get it in twenty seconds and marvel at my stupidity, or judge its obtuseness, but in the end I'm glad to have read it. I find that I worship Reagan less after doing so, but that I like him more, that I wish in some ways I could be like him while finding myself ashamed by that envy. This book also made me think about comparisons between the Cold War and our current battle with global terrorism. The comparisons are too complicated to discuss here, but I loved making them in my private journals.

The book was mine, but now it's read. There's a problem--most people in this area hate Reagan, and I have to give the book away now. If I give the book away using BookCrossings, it will get destroyed. So it gets the boring fate of the library donation. I hope someone else in the Bay Area has the open mind to read it. I hope someone else in the Bay Area is an Independent.

Good night, Great Communicator, and thank you.

P.S. - Ronald Reagan's final letter to the American public, in which he disclosed his diagnoses of Alzheimer's, was handwritten, in cursive. I found this particularly poignant, and that in a generation someone will have to translate it, even though it's written in English. The cursive facsimile is reproduced in the book courtesy the author, and I was grateful.(less)

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May 07, 2011 Adrian Carpio rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, politics, american-history

"Why do these printed shapes beneath his moving finger not form themselves into words, as they used to…? Who is this big brown-suited man in the television documentary, saluting and smiling? Why does the light go dim when clouds drift together? Why are “the fellows” so uncooperative at three in the morning when he dresses for an urgent appointment? Why do magnolia blossoms, pristine on the tree, darken when they fall? And what is this pale ceramic object on the sandy floor of his fish tank at Fo...more "Why do these printed shapes beneath his moving finger not form themselves into words, as they used to…? Who is this big brown-suited man in the television documentary, saluting and smiling? Why does the light go dim when clouds drift together? Why are “the fellows” so uncooperative at three in the morning when he dresses for an urgent appointment? Why do magnolia blossoms, pristine on the tree, darken when they fall? And what is this pale ceramic object on the sandy floor of his fish tank at Fox Plaza? A miniature white house, with tall classical columns, hauntingly familiar. He takes it home, clenched wet in his fist: “This is…something to do with me….I’m not sure what.’"

This made me cry. And I don’t mean my eyes welled up with tears and I brushed them away. No. I read these words aloud to my wife. As I finished I tried to hold back. I couldn’t. I sobbed and let out a cry so desperate and primal.

The last time I cried like this was when they placed my grandmother in a wall at a mausoleum. She died of complications from Alzheimer’s like Ronald Reagan.

When she was suffering through the disease I never sat down to think about what she may have been going through. Sure I looked up the symptoms and I knew that she would eventually forget “how to eat” but that was what I read online. I never saw it. I never stopped to think about it.

Then today I read the above. How President Reagan, the man who brought this country out of a recession, the man who called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and helped bring about the fall of Communism and the decades of death that that system had brought about to millions in Europe and throughout the world; this man, this larger than the life figure did not understand how clouds could block out the sun’s rays. This man who was the leader of the free world, who told Gorbachev to “bring down this wall”; this same man could not remember that he was president.

I thought of my grandmother and also my grandfather who is in the beginning stages of the disease, and wondered if they had the same thoughts.

Did she forget why flowers darken?

Did she forget the woman who was always smiling in pictures?

Did she forget why she never looked directly at a camera? Did she forget when a photographer in the 30s told her it was “bad form” to do so?

Did she forget that she was mayor of Matanzas?

Did she not know that it was her favorite grandson who was with her at the hospital the night before she died, holding her hand, whispering in her ear that “I am with you. I love you, abuela. God hears you”?(less)

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Jul 17, 2008 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was only 8 years old when Ronald Reagan left office, so I felt like I was rediscovering the era of my childhood while reading this book. RR was such an imposing figure upon my imagination, and I remember sadly watching as Alzheimer's slowly took his faculties and he dwindled away into a shadow of what he once was as I grew into an adult. I definitely learned much about twentieth-century American history, and especially about Dutch himself. The best part about this memoir is the author's abilit...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Jeffrey rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Morris is well known for having employed in this biography the technique of inventing a fictional lifelong friend of Reagan's who narrates the book, therefore making it a "memoir" instead of a biography. Not neccesarily a bad idea, but there was just waaay too much character development for a narrative device. I'm reading pages & pages about a guy who doesn't exist when I'm trying to read a biography of one who did.

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Aug 12, 2010 Stephen Dutton rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Though this biography written in the form of a fictional memoir had much good information and very well researched background, it is no wonder indeed why many find this work difficult to follow. Unknown to the reader is that half of the book is fiction. Yes a historic fiction. The author put himself into the "memoir" when he in fact was NEVER THERE. So where does fact end and fancy begin?

That said, there is much information to found in the work. Just, every time he starts talking about himself...more

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Jun 16, 2008 Seth Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: rugged-reads

Morris' picture of Reagan is complex and personal. I enjoyed the book most because it deals--in depth--with a subject too recent to have received any coverage in my "history" classes and too distant for my personal memory.

It's clear from the start that Morris has an objectivity problem where "Dutch" is concerned. What's less clear--and, I think, likely evolved over the course of his writing the book--is the nature of his Bias. "Dutch" is as much about Morris' rather one-sided relationship with R...more

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Jul 18, 2010 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked the actual Biography and thought the author had some good insights. However, it felt like it was as much about the fictional narrator than Ronald Reagan. I didn't know until after I had finished that more than two thirds of "first person" accounts were fictional. I didn't enjoy them when reading, and felt the book would have been much better if they had been left out.

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Aug 20, 2010 Heidi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was very clear to me from the beginning that the author did not like Ronald Reagan. I felt that it was a very jaded representation of the man. Although, I felt compelled to finish the book, I wish that I could have stopped. About half-way through, the author tells you what he has against the former President. That he agreed to write the memoir in the first place is explained in the very beginning. It was a long book.

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Feb 24, 2012 Rachel Jacobs rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A lengthy biography on Ronald Regan that spans from his early life to the end of his presidency. I enjoyed reading about Regan's life and was stunned to understand how ill he was while President (however I was 11 when he left office).
Mr. Morris was granted exclusive access to Mr. Regan and is able to provide a very detailed account.

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Jul 26, 2011 Joshua rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Edmund Morris does a great job telling the story of our greatest president. One of the great things about the book is the historical narrative; it's like reading a good story, not a textbook. Morris personalizes it by including bits of his own life, and where his and Reagan's lives intersected over the course of their lives.

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Feb 28, 2009 Jill rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Its been a while since I read this but it seemed at the time to be a bit of a hatchet job and as the years go by people seem to be remembering Reagan a bit more kindly and with more respect.
The book sketched a pretty one-dimentional character that seemed more tragic comic book than acurrate.
I wouldn't recommend it.

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May 21, 2012 G.M. Lawrence rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't want to like it. I wanted to feel betrayed by its failure to conform to tradition. But in the end, I came to view it as a masterpiece and the most alluring of presidential biographies. A bit overly "English public school" in tone and timbre, but that's a burden one can bear for such a novel work.

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Apr 22, 2011 Chris Hunt rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A "new-style" biography of Ronald Reagan wherein the author literally inserts himself into the story as if he had been one of Reagan's friends growing up, though they had never known each other. It was an original ploy which I give the author (a little) respect for trying, but I didn't like the effect. Nor did I like his negative bias towards Reagan.

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Sep 06, 2012 Rich Hoffman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A wonderful book about the life and times of Ronald Reagan. I learned about two things in this book that I didn't know about. One was that Reagan thought about becoming a communist, and two I learned about the novels of Ayn Rand. A wonderful book, and very controversial.

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Dec 12, 2012 Len Washko rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved it. Big Reagan fan. Unique bio. Morris gets inside his head, partly fictionalizing, and brilliantly. You'll understand why he was a giant, will remain a giant, and how he bacame such. You cannot understand the 1970s and 1980s if you do not read this.

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Aug 09, 2012 Corey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was the first major Reagan bio to come out. It was a strange bio in that thre author inserts himself into the story as a fictional character. Bizzare. But, the author had access to Reagan throughout his Presidency, so this is a very detailed account.

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Jun 25, 2010 Jacob rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, read-halfway

It took me about 5 years to finish this book, but I'm glad I did. I think it's interesting how he invented various persona to get to the heart of the Reagan phenomenon (about midway through the book, he deftly drops them all and simply becomes "Edmund Morris", during an interlude at the Reagan archives of all places). However, it seems that the mere fact that I spent about half of the time considering the narrator and his method of narration means that the book, as a biography, is a failure - th...more

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Nov 22, 2009 Judith added it · review of another edition

Although I was interested in reading about Reagan and there is some good information in this book, there is entirely too much abou tthe author himself though the end relates the reason why and it is mildly interesting.

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About Edmund Morris

Edmund Morris is a writer best known for his biographies of United States presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Morris received his early education in Kenya after which he attended Rhodes University in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before emigrating to the United States in 1968.
His biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize and Natio...more

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