The President Will See You Now

Just published: The President Will See You Now: My Stories and Lessons from Ronald Reagan’s Final Years by Peggy Grande.

People interviews the author, who was Reagan’s longtime assistant:

Once he was in his office entertaining visitors – as he often did. He was telling a familiar story, one he told so often even Grande knew it word for word. “The story was flowing off his tongue effortlessly,” Grande writes in the memoir. “This was one of his greatest hits.”

Just before delivering the punch line, Reagan stopped. “He looked at me with a look I would eventually get to know very well but didn’t understand yet,” Grande writes. “I knew what he was supposed to say and he knew that he did, too. But it didn’t come out.”