Books in Brief: Ronald Reagan’s Call to Action

Ronald Reagan’s Call to Action, by Ronald Reagan and Charles D. Hobbs (Warner Books, 173 pp., paperback, $1.75).

This is obviously a campaign-year opus but, unlike most others, it is no sugar-coated autobiography meant to bamboozle the crowd into thinking that, despite his sterling accomplishments, the candidate is, with his wife and kids and dog, just plain folk like us. It is instead, strangely enough, a book on the issues: and if the setting down-during an election year, in black and white, and in one convenient volume-of actual positions isn’t enough to have Ronald Reagan thrown out of the politician’s guild, I don’t know what is. The book promises Reagan’s “official position on every major issue of the day,” although it isn’t quite as exhaustive as that. Abortion, for one thing, is not mentioned, but all in all an extraordinarily wide range of topics is covered intelligently. The format of the book is most unusual: not quite straight narrative and not quite question-and-answer, although it is based on a large number of interviews that Hobbs had with Reagan early last year. The tone is set by Reagan’s conversational writing, tacked down by Hobbs’s explanatory notes; while Hobbs pasted the whole thing together in a cohesive pattern, it is Reagan’s portion of the text that rivets attention and carries the book along. Whether commenting on the need to limit permanently the cost of government by constitutional amendment (“We have to cut government off at the pockets”) or on congressional interference with foreign policy (“It’s like writing a symphony by committee”), Reagan is readable, quotable, and thought-provoking. He backs up his ideas with his usual staggering array of statistics and concrete examples. DAVID A. PIETRUSZA

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Ronald Reagan’s Call to Action, by Ronald Reagan and Charles D. Hobbs (Warner Books, 173 pp., paperback, $1.75).

This is obviously a campaign-year opus but, unlike most others, it is no sugar-coated autobiography meant to bamboozle the crowd into thinking that, despite his sterling accomplishments, the candidate is, with his wife and kids and dog, just plain folk like us. It is instead, strangely enough, a book on the issues: and if the setting down-during an election year, in black and white, and in one convenient volume-of actual positions isn’t enough to have Ronald Reagan thrown out of the politician’s guild, I don’t know what is. The book promises Reagan’s “official position on every major issue of the day,” although it isn’t quite as exhaustive as that. Abortion, for one thing, is not mentioned, but all in all an extraordinarily wide range of topics is covered intelligently. The format of the book is most unusual: not quite straight narrative and not quite question-and-answer, although it is based on a large number of interviews that Hobbs had with Reagan early last year. The tone is set by Reagan’s conversational writing, tacked down by Hobbs’s explanatory notes; while Hobbs pasted the whole thing together in a cohesive pattern, it is Reagan’s portion of the text that rivets attention and carries the book along. Whether commenting on the need to limit permanently the cost of government by constitutional amendment (“We have to cut government off at the pockets”) or on congressional interference with foreign policy (“It’s like writing a symphony by committee”), Reagan is readable, quotable, and thought-provoking. He backs up his ideas with his usual staggering array of statistics and concrete examples. DAVID A. PIETRUSZA