The Reagan Diaries

During the week of the Reagan funeral in June 2004, innumerable Reagan "experts" babbled endlessly on television and seemed only to believe that Ronald Reagan was a nice guy with a good sense of humor--a sort of global Captain Kangaroo. What they didn't know, and what these diaries now reveal, is that Reagan was a man of great passion, great ideas, great anger, great ideology, great pragmatism, and great love. He liked a good joke but he loved a good conversation.

Though some think Reagan didn't have a temper, he himself admitted that he did. In an unpleasant phone conversation with Senator Pete Domenici, the president inscribed, "I got mad."