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It was a Eureka Moment when the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California was getting a housecleaning in 2010 and someone came across a cardboard box inscribed on the side with the handwritten words "R.R.'s desk." Upon opening it, a great treasure was discovered: years of Reagan's own speech notes, handwritten on 4x6 cards. A wise and witty scholar, Douglas Brinkley, has now organized and published them under the title The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom.
The cards were kept in the plastic sleeves of a black photo album. The bunch called Humor was kept with a rubber band around them. The inside front and back covers of this book reproduce many of the cards so you can see Reagan's careful and legible handwriting. Anyone wondering how Reagan, called the Great Comunicator, delivered his oratorical magic as a dinner speaker and statesman, will enjoy this compilation. It includes such still-timely words of wisdom as "Every time the govt. shifts to the left, the decimal point in taxes shifts to the right" and "Prosperity is something created by businessmen for politicians to take credit for." The breadth of subject matter in these notes give a window into the mind of a great President who was deeply knowledgeable about culture and the arts as well as politics. (HarperCollins Publishers, 2011, 299 pp., $25.99.) |
These were the notes that enabled Reagan to add bits of wisdom, historic quotations, jokes, one-liners, and political aphorisms in his speeches. They include both Reagan's original writing and his favorite quotations from the Founding Fathers, novelists and poets, including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as well as pertinent quotes from Lenin and Mao. Reagan took many shrewd choices from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. All these cards were written in his own hand and organized by subject: On the Nation, On Liberty, On War, On the People, On Religion, The World, On Character, and on Political Theater.
