''The Reagan Diaries'' is an edited and published version of the diaries kept by

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

during his presidency. The book was edited by

Douglas Brinkley Douglas Brinkley (born December 14, 1960) is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities, and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is the history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Histor ...

and was published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

in 2007, three years after Reagan's death. It reached the number one spot on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list. The complete diaries of his presidency were published in an unabridged form in 2009.

Reagan's diaries

Reagan was one of five U.S. presidents to have kept a consistent diary as president, and the only one to do so each day, never neglecting an entry (even when he was in the hospital recovering from his assassination attempt). The diaries number five volumes of thick, maroon, leather-bound books, normally kept in the White House residence, written in simple, sing-song prose, with many misspellings. Former

First Lady First lady is an unofficial title usually used for the wife, and occasionally used for the daughter or other female relative, of a non- monarchical head of state or chief executive. The term is also used to describe a woman seen to be at the ...

Nancy Reagan Nancy Davis Reagan (; born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016) was an American film actress and First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989. She was the second wife of president Ronald Reagan. Reagan was born in Ne ...

made the diaries available to be transcribed in 2005, and the Reagan Library Foundation partnered with

to print them in 2007. The company paid seven figures for the world publication rights. In them, Reagan wrote about his relationship with his children, once writing that he refused to talk to his son, Ron, and about his relationship, love, devotion, for his wife. When Nancy Reagan was away on her frequent " Just Say No" anti-drug crusades, Reagan wrote in his diary about going "upstairs to a lonely old house," and noted their anniversary as "29 years of more happiness than any man could rightly deserve." Also writing about his wife, he stated "I pray I'll never face a day when she isn't there." Although he was not a regular churchgoer, his simple faith is consistent in the diaries, and he never spelled out even mild swear words, with hell being written as h--l, and damn as d--n. Compared to other Presidential writings of innermost thoughts, Reagan's thoughts appear far more shallow. However, their original intent does not suggest that they were meant to capture deep thoughts. One reviewer wrote, "No one expected Reagan to be introspective or philosophical in his diary, ... which is why he elided his mild cursing ("d--n" and "h--l") and was circumspect in other ways". The head archivist at the Reagan Library, Mike Dugan, described Reagan's writings by saying, "I wouldn't call it an introspective diary, but he states his position. What you read confirms that what you saw with Reagan is what you got."

Gallery

The actual diaries are on display at the

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is the repository of presidential records from the administration of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, and the burial place of the president and first lady, Nancy Reagan. It is the lar ...

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References

External links

Interview with Brinkley on ''The Reagan Diaries'', April 27, 2007

C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...

Interview with Brinkley on ''The Reagan Diaries'', June 9, 2007

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reagan Diaries Diaries 2007 non-fiction books Books by Ronald Reagan Books about Ronald Reagan Political autobiographies HarperCollins books Books published posthumously Books written by presidents of the United States