Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House -- 1911 to 1980

FROM OUR EDITORS

Vanity Fair's Bob Colacello worked six years on this book, but perhaps the most book's most impressive facet is the author's strong ties with Nancy Reagan. Because of their long friendship, Colacello was uniquely able to gain the unstinting cooperation of Mrs. Reagan and her closest confidants. The former first lady gave the biographer exclusive access to her personal papers, and he spent thousands of hours interviewing her and Reagan family friends and political associates. A sympathetic portrait of a loving partnership.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

He was the son of an alcoholic shoe salesman. She was the adopted daughter of a wealthy doctor. Both Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis learned the value of cultivating the right friendships when they were young. Ronnie found his first marriage and political ambitions at irreconcilable odds, but when he met Nancy, one of the most remarkable career-building and romantic partnerships of all time was born. Now comes the definitive portrait of America's First Couple, in a book that is at once a political saga, a social history, and an unforgettable love story. No one is better equipped to chronicle the Reagans' remarkable journey than noted journalist and longtime Vanity Fair writer Bob Colacello. With unprecedented access to Nancy Reagan, her personal papers, and the couple's closest friends-including many who have spoken on the record for the first time-he sheds light on the Reagans' early years and the development of the future president's political ideas. Delving into their Hollywood careers, Ronald Reagan's marriage to actress Jane Wyman, and the Reagans' complicated relationship with their children, Colacello sets the record straight about the most private aspects of their lives.

Most of all, he reveals how the Reagans perfected their social skills into an art form, rising through fashionable Los Angeles society to the governor's mansion in Sacramento in 1967 and to the front door of the White House in 1980. Behind them, helping them climb from one peak to the next, was the Group, a clique of wealthy men and glamorous wives that would wield tremendous power throughout Ronald Reagan's political life. Moving, uncompromisingly honest, and rich with details previously hidden from public view, Ronnie and Nancy reveals the dynamics of an extraordinary marriage and reflects upon its amazing impact not only on American society but also on the cause of freedom around the world.

FROM THE CRITICS

Walter Isaacson - The New York Times

Respectful without being fawning, Colacello achieves a rare alchemy, spinning ''the social side of life'' into serious insights about his subjects' hearts and minds.

Publishers Weekly

This joint biography by Vanity Fair contributor Colacello (Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up) opens not with a power scene in the White House of the new elected President Reagan, but with a glittering dinner at Le Cirque: Nancy Reagan wore mink, we're told; her friend Betsy Bloomingdale wore sable. So from page one, it's clear that this account will break little new ground regarding the most vital aspect of Ronald Reagan's life: his political evolution and rise to power. Colacello's chief interest is family gossip and the Reagans' interactions with the world's social elites: the aging Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Frank Sinatra, Malcolm Forbes, and Lee and Walter Annenberg, among many others. Throughout the book, vast political generalizations dovetail with energetic name-dropping and a recitation of the Reagans' social calendar. Colacello also focuses on the Reagans' relationships with their children, and some of these details are quite interesting: during the 1970s, Ron Jr. could be heard by neighbors in Pacific Palisades screaming at his mother: "Leave me alone!... All I want is to be left alone." On the political side, Colacello provides a readable but not incisive chronicle of well-known events, almost always adopting Nancy Reagan's point of view vis-a-vis her husband's assistants, associates, allies and enemies (the author had Nancy's cooperation). All told, this account gives far too much space to who had dinner with whom and on which yacht, nearly always to the neglect of more important matters. (Oct. 6) Forecast: While there are more scholarly volumes on Reagan's life, this will be the popular version, aided by a first serial in Vanity Fair, a Good Morning America appearance and major advertising and promotion. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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