A first volume of a definitive portrait based on the author's unique access to the Reagan family and their friends shares previously undisclosed information about the marriage between Ronald and Nancy, Ronald Reagan's modest childhood in rural Illinois, and Nancy Reagan's carefully cultivated social connections. 50,000 first printing. Colacello is the former editor of Interview magazine and currently a special correspondent for Vanity Fair . Six years of research and approximately 200 interviews, including many talks with Nancy Reagan herself, stand behind this first volume in a planned two-part dual biography of the late president and his controversial First Lady. In nice and easy prose, in a tone that is both friendly toward his subjects but also balanced in his estimation of them (for instance, about Nancy, "I agreed that the press has been unduly hard on her. Yet it crossed my mind [that she] seemed to have a talent for playing the martyr"), Colacello takes what he calls "a social approach" to the lives of the Reagans. His basic premise, well supported here, is that the importance of Nancy and her social connections to the career of Ronald cannot be overestimated. The biography's actual structure is impeccable as the author profiles the two of them individually, in a series of alternating chapters, and then draws their stories together. This first volume deals with the pre-presidential years, which admirers of the president and Nancy will enjoy learning about; even readers less than admiring of the couple will be curious about the details of their lives, both separately and in tandem. Expect much demand. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Bob Colacello lives in Amagansett, New York.