How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader

This is a wonderful book that sheds so much light on the human side of Ronald Reagan. The press has had it all wrong for so many years. The man we know and admire as one of our greatest presidents was so because of the qualities of the man that the author so eloquently reveals in his book. I wish more Liberals would read this book, including Mr. Clinton, because of the lessons of humanity and small government that the author shares. A side of Ronald Reagan that most of us never knew, his humor and his kindness comes out very early on in the boook. We could all learn alot from this man.

In true revisionist style, Dinesh D'Souza highlights quotations that agree with his preconceived conclusions and ignores or covers up everything that does not. D'Souza's Reagan is the perfect embodiment of the "Morning in America" image that the Reagan Administration tried to project, but it bears little resemblance to who Ronald Reagan really was.
Revisionist history, whether it be on the right or the left, is almost always bad history. Dinesh D'Souza's biography of Ronald Reagan is a classic example of right-wing revisionist history, and like other works of revisionism, it is bad history.
If you like the fantasy image of Reagan, then this book is for you. If you're interested in the real Ronald Reagan, stay away from D'Souza's hero-worshiping tomes.

Agree with him or not, most people acknowledge that Ronald Reagan's positive attitude uplifted the citizens of the United States after several years of demoralizing events.

D'Souza presents the essence of Reagan's character of optimism, which continues to influence our great country.

This is a story of how an ordinary person not only rose to the presidency, but changed the course of The United States. It should be read by everyone who wants to learn proven lessons on leadership and to better him or herself.

- Richard V. Battle, Author of The Four Letter Word That Builds Character

D'Souza does a fine job of detailing the successes of Ronald Reagan's presidency. He is also not afraid to identify the few shortcomings of Mr. Reagan's personality as well as a few poor decisions made during his administration. Because Reagan is my hero, I have read several biographies and accounts of his life and accomplishments...and this book is the best I have read thus far. D'Souza lays out both sides of the story, but in the end, he defends Reagan as the most important man of the latter 20th Century. If there is any question about Reagan being one of the elite Presidents, this book answers it. Bravo!

Nearly 400 footnotes support D'Souza's research of Ronald Reagan's life and presidency. This book is packed with facts, quotes, dates, and logic-based opinions. Closed-minded Reagan haters will be dazed and angered by the evidence presented. P. J. O'Rourke said it best: "The best story I have read in years and the truest" Best not to enter in a discussion about Reagan until you have a grasp of the facts presented by D'Souza in "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became and Extraordinary Leader."

I only started following politics and listening to talk radio in the last two years. I never thought much of Reagan but given how often his name kept coming up I wanted to find out more about him. This book helped me understand Reagan's philosophy of Government, Foreign Affairs, and Economics. It also helped me appreciate how completely at odds he was with the mainstream thinking of the political elites, academic and media types of that time (and still today). What an amazing man.

After hearing a speech from Mr. D'souza I purchased this book and his tome "The End of Racisim".
While I was bogged down in the intellectually and scholarly writing style of "The End of Racisim" this book was a suprising turn to the lighthearted and fun.
The narrative stories about Former President Reagan are absolutely wonderful.
I'd reccomend this for any history fan and anyone interested in political history!

Terrific book - even if you disagree with the author's conclusions about Reagan's presidency. Perhaps most striking is how embarrasingly wrong Reagan's critics throughout the 1980's were - and how they have tried to cover their tracks.

What a great job by D'Souza. An enlightening study of Reagan's presidency and his political rise to the "top job." It's a quick-read that is easy to understand, and really does a good job of describing the landscape Reagan inherited and how he changed it for the better. Chuck-full with classic Reagan quotes, I recommend this book to anyone who needs to re-charge their conservative battery.

THIS BOOK IS AN EXCELLENT PRIMER FOR ANYONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN EITHER A CURSORY OR DETAILED STUDY OF RONALD REAGAN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. MR. SOUZA DELINEATES IN GREAT DETAIL HOW REAGAN OVERCAME HIS CRITICS AT EVERY TURN AND IGNITED A CONSERVATIVE RENAISSANCE THAT STILL GOES ON TODAY. ANYONE, DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN, LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE, WILL BE LEFT WITH THE DESIRE TO READ MORE ABOUT RONALD REAGAN AFTER READING THIS BOOK.

Nobody will ever every mistake this for a scholarly, objective account of Reagan, but at least D'Souza has the decency to admit up front that he is no way objective about this particular subject.
As history, it is almost worthless. However, as an examination into the mindset of the conservative movement largely fostered by Reagan, this is a most useful source. You may not come across with a better understanding of Reagan (let's face it, D'Souza is basically preaching to the neoconservative choir), but you may better understand those who came after Reagan. Because of that, the book does have merit (albeit not of the sort the author may have intended) and thus I give it three stars. Just make sure to read the book in its proper context.

this book is excellent. answers every liberal b.s. misconception about reagan and reveals him to be the genius no one expected. i am using this book as my main source for my senior thesis; it is reliable, organized and easy to understand. i finished the book not only loving reagan but d'souza as well.

This is an amazing book about the life and Presidency of Reagan. You know that the book is on target because not everything is 'pro-Reagan.' The author simply looks at the facts. The best autobiography I have ever read, or heard of, for that matter.

This book is a classic example of hagiography. There's a lot of unadulterated praise here. A lot of it! But, there's very little real substance. I want to read about Ronald Reagan's life, not sing his praises from the highest mountaintop. Dinesh D'Souza would do well to learn the historian's art of objectivity. It's what's most obviously lacking in this tome.

This book describes the austanding personality of Ronald Reagan and why he is the most beloved President of United States in the Modern Era. He is a great man who is admired in all the corners of the world.

In 349 B.C., the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes wrote: "Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, we readily believe."
How accurately descriptive of D'Souza's hagiography and the legions of Reagan fans who hold it up as the "definitive" Reagan biography. D'Souza's book merely perpetuates the myth that Reagan was a great man and some sort of knowledgable statesman, and the Reagan fans who wish it were so eat it up like pablum.
In truth, Reagan had been a shill for corporate America ever since his B movie career collapsed in the early 1950s. His entire political philosophy was based upon variations of the same stock speeches that were written for him during his days as a spokesman for GE in the mid '50s. Rather than a life of "extraordinary leadership," Reagan was a skilled practitioner of political mountebankery.
Hardly something or someone to look up at with unadulterated admiration. People who find this book and its thesis credible simply prove Demosthenes right.

This is a wonderful book that sheds so much light on the human side of Ronald Reagan. The press has had it all wrong for so many years. The man we know and admire as one of our greatest presidents was so because of the qualities of the man that the author so eloquently reveals in his book. I wish more Liberals would read this book, including Mr. Clinton, because of the lessons of humanity and small government that the author shares. A side of Ronald Reagan that most of us never knew, his humor and his kindness comes out very early on in the boook. We could all learn alot from this man.

READERS! BEWARE! KNOW WHO YOU ARE READING! If you are not well-aware of political gamesmanship, you might be seduced by DeSouza. He can write. What you don't know is that he is a WELL-FUNDED NEO-CONSERVATIVE via Dartmouth College. This book on Reagan is just one more outlet for the carefully crafted mechinations of the superrich. Of course they love Reagan and his trickle down economics. It was a ploy to further enrich them! The book is laden with AGENDA because DeSouza has been bought several times over. You will definitely find he has ties to Dartmouth, William F. Buckley, and various superconservative foundations that wine and dine young intellectuals, then use them dress up their inhumane ideas in attractive colors.
He's essentially an intellectual terrorist.

5DSouza's biography of Reagan starts off strong because he immediately addresses what most people who were born after, say, 1950 think of when they think of Reagan: that it is mindblowing that a man who was neither rich, nor intelligent, nor good looking, (sorry Ron) became not only the most powerful man in the world but also widely acknowledged (even among some democrats even!) to be one of the most effective leaders in the history of the world - perhaps most extraordinary in that even his staunchest allies concede that his success was improbable, yet even his strongest detractors agree that he was staggering in his impact and his efficacy. Any book that does not pause for a while to ponder this theme immediately loses credibility as a "modern" treatment of Reagan's tenure. So I give D'Souza credit for not ignoring what most people find so interesting about Reagan.

That said, I do not really think this is an interesting book. It is pretty breezy and not that detailed. I also think that D'Souza is a little bit infatuated with Reagan, which is okay up to a point but he sometimes can't help but sound rather stilted or even inane in his praise. More or less, once D'Souza is done addressing the nature of the social phenomenon that is Reagan, his conclusions fall quite flat. Reagan was a success because he was "an actor" with the ability to adapt to any situation while tricking those around him into thinking that he really was as stupid as his brown polyester suits made him look? Yeah, right. Reagan was such a success promoting capitalism abroad because he "intuitively" understood the fact that leftist economic regimes were a bad thing? Sounds nice, but a big yawn as a driving idea behind this "new" look at Reagan.

(IMHO, I believe Reagan did not simply get up one day and grunt "Communism is bad." Over time, he came to understand HOW leftism corrodes and perverts a society to its very core - and that leftist governance invariably leads to fatal disintigration from the INSIDE OUT within a few generations - rather than from the OUTSIDE IN. Reagan's comprehension of the distinction between the two models of understanding are what were REALLY made him great in my opinion at least.)

Sometimes I was not sure whether D'Souza was fawning over the man or committing the same mistake he accuses other scholars of making: that of oversimplifying a most complicated person.

This book reminds me of the Inspector Clouzeau movies: every time he banged his head he did it deliberately to test the consistency of the material. One shudders to think that kind of miserable country and world this would be had Reagan never been born.
He loved America so much, he fed its children ketchup and called it a vegetable. He was such a great communicator, he couldn't persuade his own children. He admired Thatcher who admired and still admires Pinochet. He fired 11,000 air traffic controllers. He hired James Watt who said that Indian reservations are socialism and ought to be abolished (monogamy is also socialism). He thought the Soviets such a huge threat that he supported the Iran Iraq war, thus weakening two nations and making them candidates for Soviet takeover. He defeated the Soviets but couldn't defeat Iran. Ironically, by supporting free trade, he eroded American sovereignty, because everything else is affected by trade. Capitalism is incompatible with conservatism. But you won't read this in this book. D'Souza has blamed liberals for "reductio ad Hitlerum". He could be blamed for "reductio ad Reaganorum". Everything good comes from one man, and there are no bad, consequences to anything he did.
Cult of personality is a bad idea that has been tried before.

If you Hate Ronald Reagan you will love this book. If you live in the real world and know how much our country improved under his presidency you will find this book distastful. My wife purchased this book to read about Reagon because she is from another country and wanted to learn about American History.

I would rate this book as total crap.