• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I could not possibly have written about President Reagan and his experience of the assassination attempt without interviewing those who served him. I am enormously grateful to former national security advisor Richard V. Allen for always taking my calls, answering my questions, and letting me read his extensive notes from his time in the White House (he is one of the most fastidious note takers I have ever met). He also graciously granted me access to more than four hours of audiotape recordings he made in the Situation Room on the afternoon of the assassination attempt. The tapes provide a remarkable record—not only of what transpired in one of the government’s most sensitive rooms but also of what was happening around the world. I also must thank James A. Baker III, Edwin Meese III, Richard Williamson, Mari Maseng (Will), Ken Khachigian, Margaret Tutwiler, and David Gergen, among others, all of whom offered vivid recollections of March 30, 1981, and who helped me better understand Reagan and his presidency.

At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Ray Wilson, Michael Pinckney, and Steve Branch deserve special recognition for pointing me to documents, photographs, and audio recordings that would have taken me weeks of sleuthing to find on my own. I would also like to thank Joanne Drake, the chief of staff for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, for allowing me to inspect the handwritten notes passed to GW’s doctors and nurses by the president after the shooting. It is difficult to describe the extraordinary experience of holding one of these notes and tracing Reagan’s scribbles across the page with a finger.

This book could never have been written without those who taught me to report and write: Don Cheeseman, the late Richard Drozd, John Kupetz, Tom McGinty, Joel Bewley, Peter Callas, John Fairhall, Bill Ordine, Michael James, Michael Gray, Tony Barbieri, Bill Marimow, Bill Miller, Gabe Escobar, Andy Mosher, Steven Levingston, Gene Fynes, the late Marcia Greene, Lynn Medford, Carol Morello, Mike Semel, and Kevin Merida. At the Washington Post, my professional home for the last six years, I received constant support and encouragement from the best newspapering staff in the world. Marcus Brauchli and Emilio Garcia-Ruiz did not hesitate to grant me an extended leave to write this book; James McLaughlin, the Post’s associate general counsel, was instrumental in helping me obtain records from the normally tightfisted Secret Service; and Eddy Palanzo, a researcher, helped me find many of the wonderful photographs that appear in the book. And like every Post reporter who has come before me and written a book, I owe heartfelt thanks to the company’s chairman, Donald E. Graham—a tireless advocate for aggressive local news coverage and a close reader of crime stories—for providing an amazing place for reporters to practice their craft.

To say that writing a book is a team effort is an understatement. My own squad of able researchers and transcriptionists—James de Haan, Matt Castello, Julie Tate, and Marian Sullivan—were instrumental in ensuring that this project was completed on time. My agent, Rafe Sagalyn, taught me how to write a book proposal and got me to think like an author, not a newspaper reporter. My publisher, Henry Holt and Company, showed a surprising degree of confidence in a first-time author, and for that I must thank its president, Stephen Rubin. Others at Holt, including Maggie Richards, Maggie Sivon, Emi Ikkanda, Meryl Levavi, and Chris O’Connell, put in long hours to streamline, package, and market the book; meanwhile, copy editor Jolanta Benal gave the manuscript a thorough and much-appreciated scrubbing. Finally, I owe an unquantifiable debt to my editor, John Sterling, who taught me how to write a narrative history and was always levelheaded, optimistic, and understanding—especially when I was not. The readers of this book have benefited greatly from his keen eye and deft pen.

The most important tributes belong to those who have supported