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Although Morris isn't much interested in substance, he's obsessed with appearances -- especially Reagan's. Dutch is "young, muscular" and "perfectly spruced in dark pin-striped double-breaster"; he appears "virile and handsome in his dress whites"; he is "a big and remarkably attractive man"; he is "tall, relaxed" and "improbably handsome" and, finally, at the age of 69, as "broad as a surfboard and almost as hard, superbly balanced, glowing with health and handsome enough for a second career in the movies."

Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan By Edmund Morris Random House, 874 pages Nonfiction   Buy Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by By Edmund Morris

There is one thing Morris might still do to try to redeem himself after this debacle. Although he got $3 million from Random House because he had been promised unprecedented access to a sitting president, remarkably little in this book seems to come from his own reporting; most of the volume repeats news reported in previous biographies. For example, Morris implies that one of his biggest scoops is his discovery of Reagan's first fiancée, Margaret Cleaver. Reagan's eyes flashed "blue anger ... when I boasted that I had tracked" her down. "Oh," Reagan says, "you found out about her, huh." But as veteran Reagan watcher Lou Cannon pointed out in the Los Angeles Times, this "scoop" was first reported in Reagan's own 1965 autobiography, "Where's the Rest of Me?" Surely there are some real nuggets in the massive archive Morris presumably accumulated. For the sake of history, he should make his files available to a serious historian, who might some day write a serious book.
salon.com | Oct. 7, 1999

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