Stories in His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416584501 ISBN 13: 9781416584506

Publisher: Free Press, 2007

Synopsis

Ronald Reagan loved to tell stories. Sometimes he used them to break the ice, or to prove a point, but very often he used them to inspire, to uplift, and to remind his listeners of what matters most in life. Recently, in the archives of the Reagan Library, researcher Kiron Skinner unearthed a trove of handwritten Reagan manuscripts from the late 1970s, over 650 in all, which included some priceless examples of Reagan's storytelling abilities. Stories in His Own Hand reproduces the best of these deeply personal anecdotes.

Skinner, along with longtime Reagan aides and scholars Annelise and Martin Anderson, has carefully documented the extent of Reagan's manuscripts, which originated as radio transcripts. Earlier, in the bestselling Reagan, In His Own Hand, the editors compiled a broad range of Reagan's policy-oriented essays from this collection, showing an astonishing breadth of vision concerning nearly every issue he would face as president. Here they reveal a different Ronald Reagan: not the political but the personal man, not the executive but the teacher.

Here is Reagan on men and women, life and death, family and friends. Here is a man who loved to tell a story to make us all stop, listen, and think about what it means to be human.

About this title

About the Author

Kiron K. Skinner is an assistant professor of history and of political science at Carnegie Mellon University, and a Hoover Institution Research Fellow. She is also a Fellow in the Department of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and National Interest. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

From Publishers Weekly

In the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan hosted a daily national radio program, for which he wrote his own commentary. In Stories in His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson, 30 of his broadcasts and 6 pieces written at other times are collected alongside facsimiles of the original handwritten documents. Offering inspirational words on many key events, institutions and experiences death, marriage, Christmas, religion, sports, war, the media Reagan waxes warm and fuzzy and sometimes critical. He comes down on antiwar protesters and lauds American soldiers with a story of 10 veterans who asked to go back to help the Vietnamese after being discharged; he demonstrates the "civilizing influence" of women with a story of a brave hostess in colonial India. Fans of Reagan and of heartwarming Americana will enjoy this little book, with a foreword by George Shultz.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1416584501
• ISBN 13: 9781416584506
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Skinner Kiron K.