Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY's picks for the weekend include an illuminating new biography of President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands; Doubleday, 803 pp.; non-fiction
Ronald Reagan's detractors have long portrayed him as an empty suit — a charming B-list actor who became the Great Communicator by delivering other people's lines without much substance of his own.
And it's true Reagan was at his best giving a prepared speech before a friendly audience, and less so in unpredictable news conferences and debates. His best debate lines were set-ups. "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," the then-73-year-old Reagan famously said in a debate with Walter Mondale in 1984.
But it has been only after his death that historians and biographers have begun to understand that Reagan's detached management style was more a matter of hyperfocus than neglect.
His secret, historian H.W. Brands discovers in Reagan: The Life, wasn't that he could deliver a line but that he believed those lines.
For years, as president of the Screen Actors Guild and later as the corporate pitchman for General Electric and a radio commentator, Reagan wrote his own speeches. And even after becoming president and hiring top-flight speechwriters like Peggy Noonan, Reagan was heavily involved in crafting his own message.
USA TODAY says **** out of four. "Brands is the rare academic historian who writes like a best-selling novelist."
The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows; The Dial Press, 512 pp.; fiction
Layla Beck, a young Washington, D.C., socialite kicked out of the house by her father and ordered to get a job, arrives in Macedonia, W.Va., to research a history of the town for the Federal Writers' Project.
USA TODAY says ***. "Engaging."
Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott; W.W. Norton, 648 pp.; non-fiction
A history of Col. Jimmy Doolittle's daring air raid on Tokyo in 1942, which provided the morale boost the United States needed so early after entering World War II.
USA TODAY says ***1/2. "Adds depth to a story that many Americans think they already know."
Girl in the Moonlight by Charles Dubow; William Morrow, 352 pp.; fiction
Wylie Rose falls for the stunning Cesca Bonet, in this tale of the rich, set in the Hamptons and around the world.
USA TODAY says ***. "Seduces readers with a tantalizing, salacious tale set in a world of lovely people untroubled by money matters — but troubled nonetheless."
My Generation: Collected Nonfiction by William Styron, edited by James L.W. West III; Random House; 656 pp.
Essays by the late novelist (Sophie's Choice), including meditative writings on the Nazi horror, Hiroshima and his battle with depression.
USA TODAY says ***. 'Eloquent…moving."
Contributing reviewers: Gregory Korte, Martha T. Moore, Ray Locker, Don Oldenburg, Matt Damsker