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Thirteenth Man: A Reagan Cabinet Memoir

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President Reagan firmly believed in a small government. His belief is that education should be fundamentally a local concern. He was not in favor of the federal government's involvement in the local concern, education. The agony of the author, Secretary of Education, starts here.

At the appointment of the author as Secretary of Education, the Department of Education was soon to be abolished. He was on a boat he himself was expected to sink. I do not think he disagreed with President on the importance of the state and local autonomy of education. His concern, I understand, was that no one but President of the United States himself could alter the decline of educational achievement in public schools throughout the States. The well-grounded and effective report "A Nation at Risk" was successfully prepared to persuade President to initiate the nation-wide resolution to work for excellence in education.

The author loves and agrees with Reagan. As he keeps struggling to enhance the credibility of himself and the Department of Education, less-than-expected Presidential involvement in educational concerns starts to irritate the author. I felt like advising,"Take it easy. Why not talk about your concerns with other members of the cabinet over beer? You tend to be too serious sometimes."

This is a very good inside story in the production process and publication strategy of "A Nation at Risk" report. One of the weaknesses of this book as a Reagan Cabinet memoir is that the author was not able to provide relevant episodes significant enough to describe what Reagan cabinet was, because he was not on the best terms with major figures in the cabinet, most of whom he suspected were abolitionists of the Department of Education.

Extremely self-serving and somewhat amateurish autobiography. Denigrated good people who helped his destitute widowed mother provide for her large family in order to build himself in importance.

A bureaucrat who accepted the position of Secretary of Education, a Department that President Reagan had committed to abolish, and then worked diligently to undercut the President and preserve this destructive Department.