Scope and Contents This is a first edition. Morris was selected as the official biographer of President Reagan in 1984 and had access to the president, the White House and archival material. The literary techique he utilized in writing this book can be classsified as postmodernist non-fiction because Morris' "biographical mind" became another character in telling Reagan's life story. Further, the varied typography in this book also is a postmodernist trait.The Barnes & Noble Review commented as follows. Ronald Reagan has long inspired heated opinions: His defenders think him among the greatest of presidents (Could there really have been "” and not so long ago "” a movement to add his image to Mount Rushmore?), and his detractors rate him among the worst. He was a man who relied on a sort of national nostalgia; he often spoke of how things once were (or, perhaps more accurately, how he would have had us believe they once were), evoking a simpler, more innocent time that never really existed....

Scope and Contents Morris was selected as the official biographer of President Reagan in 1984 and had access to the president, the White House and archival material. The literary techique he utilized in writing this book can be classsified as postmodernist non-fiction because Morris' "biographical mind" became another character in telling Reagan's life story. Further, the varied typography in this book also is a postmodernist trait.The Barnes & Noble Review commented as follows. Ronald Reagan has long inspired heated opinions: His defenders think him among the greatest of presidents (Could there really have been "” and not so long ago "” a movement to add his image to Mount Rushmore?), and his detractors rate him among the worst. He was a man who relied on a sort of national nostalgia; he often spoke of how things once were (or, perhaps more accurately, how he would have had us believe they once were), evoking a simpler, more innocent time that never really existed. The stories he shared in an...

Scope and Contents This is the first edition, first printing of the book. Kirkus Associates provided the following review. "Having changed lives with the help of a French writer (How Proust Can Change Your Life, 1997), de Botton now seeks to offer those lives needed consolation and specific advice with the writings of some of the world's most illustrious philosophers. If too many nowadays find thinkers Nietzsche and Schopenhauer stifling and irrelevant, they need only turn to this witty, engaging book to see how wrong they are. These men de Botton also calls on, Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, and Montaigne, were in their own sometimes abstruse ways actually giving some down-to-earth, practical advice about how to cope with life's miseries and frustrations. De Botton is an able and companionable guide as he demonstrates, for example, how Socrates proves there are things far more consoling than popularity. He turns to Epicurus for advice on how to cope with not having enough money. Montaigne, clearly de...