Reagan Biography
After 14 years of researching former president Ronald Reagan, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris is stirring controversy even before the book is published. Some historians and others are questioning his decision to use a fictional narrator who interacts with Reagan in “Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan,” to be released by Random House on Sept. 30. Morris, 59, depicts himself in the book as a Reagan contemporary who, for example, caught a glimpse of Reagan as a teenager playing in a 1926 high school football game. The fictional Morris traces Reagan’s life from his birth in 1911 through the 1990s. “Edmund has either engaged in an act of genius or a most remarkable leap off the precipice,” said Anthony Doland, a Reagan speech writer. Newsweek will publish an excerpt in its Sept. 27 issue.