Kiron K. Skinner is an assistant professor of history and political science at Carnegie Mellon University, and a Hoover Institution Research Fellow. She is also a Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and National Interest Annelise Anderson has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1983. In 1980 she was a senior policy adviser to the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan, and from 1981 to 1983 she served as Associate Director for Economics and Government with the Office of Management and Budget Martin Anderson is the Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. After serving as a Special Assistant to Richard Nixon, he was a senior policy adviser to the 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, and served as chief domestic and economic policy adviser under President Reagan.

Introduction He wasn't a complicated man. He was a private man, but he was not a complicated one. But he was a very sentimental one. And he was a very, very good writer. All of his ideas and thoughts were formulated well before he became governor or certainly president. Nancy Reagan, in an interview with the editors Ronald Reagan wrote, in his own hand, from his high school years right through his presidency and on into retirement -- until Alzheimer's disease wreaked its gradual destruction. He wrote not only letters, short fiction, poetry, and sports stories, but speeches, newspaper articles, instructions to his cabinet and staff, and radio commentary on public policy issues, both foreign and domestic.Nevertheless, many of the writings under his name -- including the two books,Where's the Rest of Me?andAn American Life-- were partially written by ghostwriters. A few of his presidential speeches were drafted personally, but most were written in interaction with White House speechwriters. Most of his original writings -- those we are absolutely sure are his -- were pre-presidential. As Nancy Reagan recalls, "He continued to write in the White House. He wrote speeches in the Oval Office, and he had his own desk in the living quarters of the White House. He was always sitting at his desk in the White House, writing. He was so used to writing his own speeches that it took him a while to realize that, as president, he just wasn't going to have the time to write, though he could go over a speech draft and edit and correct. But to take the time to write a whole speech? He soon realized he wasn't going to have that time."From his high school and college years, seventeen handwritten manuscripts (and a French quiz) written between 1925 and 1931 have been preserved, mostly short stories. The high school yearbook (on which he worked) has a story and a poem he wrote. In college, he wrote for the weekly newspaper. Reagan wrote a weekly sports column for theDes Moines Dispatchwhile he worked as a radio announcer at WHO. When he went to Hollywood, he wrote, with the cooperation of Warner Bros. but not, according to Reagan himself, with their help, a series of seventeen articles about his experiences for theDes Moines Sunday Register.Nothing has thus far been found in his own hand of the speeches he gave to employees at General Electric's 135 plants between September 1954 and 1962 (although he often used a question-and-answer format on these occasions) or the many other speeches he gave during this time. It is quite possible that they were his own creations, but we cannot be sure. A number of these speeches appeared in print in various publications with titles such asA Time for Choosing, Encroaching Control,andLosing Freedom by Installments.We have excluded them from this book in order to focus on the substantive writings from the immediate pre-presidential years that exist in his own handwritten drafts.We know that Reagan wrote extensively during 1975-79, between his years as governor of California and his inauguration as president. He spent these years giving speeches, writing a newspaper column, and giving over a thousand radio addresses. The idea of the radio broadcasts and newspaper columns was developed in 1974 during Reagan's final months as governor of California. Peter Hannaford, assistant to the governor and director of public affairs during Reagan's final year, conferred with Ed Meese, then Reagan's chief of staff, and Michael Deaver, and suggested that the governor consider the offer of Harry O'Connor, the head of O'Connor Creative Services in Hollywood, to produce "a five-day-a-week, five-minute RR [radio] commentary program, to be syndicated nationally."One weekend in October 1974, Hannaford and Deaver presented a comprehensive plan to Reagan -- including newspaper columns, radio co