Ronald Reagan and the Limits of Hagiography Anonymous 12th Grade

Dutch, A Memoir of Ronald Reagan was a puzzling book for some since it is a fictionalized account of Ronald Reagan’s life from the perspective of a secondary character that is a combination of the author and complete fiction. Even though Irving Stone wrote classic biographies using the same combination of facts and fiction for various historic persons like Sigmund Freud and Michelangelo, it still seems like a strange choice to take for an historical figure that was still alive. As thought-provoking as Morris's chosen format is, his insights do not fundamentally change the vision of Reagan that even a hasty overview of Reagan's perceived strengths of leadership reveals.

Edmund Morris was born in Kenya to South African parents and quickly moved to England. For a time he was a concert pianist and copywriter and by 1966, he immigrated to the United States with his wife. As an immigrant, he took to American history in a way that went beyond the official questions on the immigration form and he wrote his first book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt in 1966. This is what would bring him to the attention of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was so impressed by Morris that he allowed him access to write a biography. However, Morris despaired of...