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My Father at 100

A Memoir
by Ron Reagan
My Father at 100: A Memoir. Viking. 2011. c.240p. ISBN 9780670022595. $25.95. AUTOBIOG
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Ronald Reagan was "easy to love but hard to know," writes his son, Ron (not Jr., as he has a different middle name from his father) in this affectionate memoir, published on what would have been Reagan's 100th birthday. The book, primarily devoted to Ron's reflections as he visits Illinois locales and researches his father's youth at the Reagan Library, is the son's story of attempting to know his father better. The autobiographical component, which includes a few episodes of Ron's mild adolescent rebellion, is relatively small in comparison with Ron's efforts to reconstruct Ronald Reagan's internal narrative of his own life, one in which Reagan was "creator and star…director and story editor" of a production where, in early frames as a lifeguard and college football player, he learned to be a hero who would one day "save the world."
VERDICT Ron Reagan, up against extant works by biographers, two sisters, brother, mother, and his father himself, may disappoint readers looking for much new information about the 40th President. But sometimes in awe of while sometimes bemused by his "square" of a dad, Ron delivers what many others have not, a down-the-middle portrait that admirers of his father and some memoir fans will likely enjoy.
Reviewed by Bob Nardini, Nashville , Feb 01, 2011
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