Roosevelt to Reagan: A Reporter's Encounters with Nine Presidents

By Hedley Donovan

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060390425
• ISBN13: 9780060390426
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An marvelous memoir that political "junkies" will love!

Hedley Donovan (1914-1990), was the editor of "Fortune" magazine in the 1940s and 1950s, and from 1964-1979 he was the editor of "TIME" magazine. In 1986 Donovan decided to write his memoirs, but he presented his experiences in a different format from the usual autobiography. Instead of simply starting out with his childhood and describing his life story from there, in "From Roosevelt to Reagan" Donovan focuses upon his meetings and personal experiences with each American President he dealt with during his career - from FDR to Ronald Reagan. Each President gets his own chapter in the book, and in these chapters Donovan offers his personal take on them: their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failures, etc. As one of the professional reviews for this book noted, it's like sitting in a bar and sharing a beer with an interesting old-timer, while listening to him recount the famous people he's dealt with. To his credit, Donovan doesn't always accept the conventional judgements or ratings of each President. For example, he judges FDR to have been a "failure" in dealing with the Great Depression, but a marvelous success in dealing with World War Two. He writes that Truman was a "Very Good" President, but he also argues that there was something "stubbornly small-bore" about Truman that prevented him from achieving true greatness, and one gets the impression that Donovan's opinion of Truman was not particularly high. He greatly admires Eisenhower and considers him to be very underrated, and his opinion of Kennedy is mixed. Like most of his journalistic and academic contemporaries, Donovan was fascinated and amused by both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, but like his contemporaries he also was acutely aware of the faults of both men. Donovan extravagantly admired Henry Kissinger, Nixon's powerful and influential Secretary of State, and Kissinger is one of the few prominent politicians whom Donovan appears to regard with less objectivity than open admiration. Like Eisenhower, Donovan believes that Ford was underrated in his time and might have made a good President if he had been elected for a full term in 1976. In the late seventies Donovan left TIME magazine to serve as a special assistant to President Carter, and he offers numerous chapters on his service in the White House, and while he admires Carter, he pulls no punches in describing his political failures. He admires Reagan's "public performance" as President, but wishes that Reagan had a "better mind" to go with his superb political skills. Donovan was a well-educated and well-read scholar, and in addition to his chapters on the Presidents he also offers incisive chapters which deal with presidential reputations (and how they can fall or rise depending upon the mood of the nation), and he offers some suggestions as to how the nation can improve its selection process for presidential candidates (he believes that the current presidential primary system is "insane")

An marvelous memoir that political "junkies" will love!

Hedley Donovan (1914-1990), was the editor of "Fortune" magazine in the forties and fifties, and from 1964-1979 he was the editor of "Time" magazine. In "From Roosevelt to Reagan" Donovan has written a marvelous memoir of his numerous meetings with every President from FDR to Reagan (and he even worked for Jimmy Carter for awhile in the late seventies). Each President gets his own chapter in the book, and in these chapters Donovan offers his personal take on them: their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failures, etc. As one of the professional reviews for this book noted, it's like sitting in a bar and sharing a beer with an interesting old-timer, while listening to him recount the famous people he's dealt with. To his credit, Donovan doesn't always accept the conventional judgements or ratings of each President. For example, he judges FDR to have been a "failure" in dealing with the Great Depression, but a marvelous success in dealing with World War Two. He writes that Truman was a "Very Good" President, but he also argues that there was something "stubbornly small-bore" about Truman that prevented him from achieving true greatness. Donovan was a well-educated and well-read scholar, and he also offers incisive chapters which deal with presidential reputations (and how they can fall or rise depending upon the mood of the nation), and he offers some suggestions as to how the nation can improve its selection process for presidential candidates (he believes that the current presidential primary system is "insane"). In short, this is a marvelous book, and it offers many unique and personal insights of the presidents and political leaders of the last 75 years. Recommended!