It's not worth the time. Then Edmund Morris fell in to my lap. He spent the past 14 years working on the definitive, authorized biography of Ronald Reagan. Deadlines came and went over those 14 years. Morris won a Pulitzer for his biography of Theodore Roosevelt, but found Reagan full of too many inconsistencies and paradoxes to fully understand him.
Few people have.
Random House has limited pre-release copies to a few staffers at The New York Times , under the condition that they could not quote directly from the book until it was released on September 30th. From the reports I've read, and from watching Morris's interview with Lesley Stahl, there is much to admire in the biography. The book appears to be meticulously researched, based on unprecedented access to Reagan, his staff, and almost everything that happened in the Oval Office. The troubling thing about this book is the blending of fact and fiction. Okay, okay, it really isn't Morris, per se, because Morris changed many details of his life, including the names of his parents and date of birth.