A Different Drummer

Written by a man who worked alongside Ronald Reagan for years and counted both Ronald and Nancy Reagan among his closest friends, this memoir covers roughly thirty-five years of acquaintance. The author makes no claim to a formal record. He instead sets down his recollections, reconstructed as faithfully as he can and centered on what these years have meant to him, without footnotes.

The book opens with the author's first meeting with Reagan during the 1966 campaign for the California governorship, along with the impressions that followed about how Reagan ran his operation, how skillfully he handled the media, and how well he communicated. The focus then shifts to the character of the man himself, including his perfectionism, competitive drive, steady discipline, and strong sense of purpose and destiny. A section of letters Reagan wrote to correspondents from many different walks of life, published here for the first time, shows him in his own words.

The narrative follows Reagan onto the campaign trail during his presidential runs and into the Oval Office. It considers how he conducted himself as president, how he changed after he was shot, and his dealings with Congress and his confrontations with Communism. The final section, written with Nancy Reagan's cooperation, examines the couple's long struggle with Alzheimer's disease and how it affected their marriage and family.