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The Way I See It
In this autobiography, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan reveals her life with the "perfect" first family. Her candid account made this memoir a New York Times best seller.
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First published May 1, 1992
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About the author
Patti Davis
20 books52 followersMy new book, Dear Mom and Dad, is the end of a long journey toward understanding my family. My hope is that readers will be inspired to take a step back and look at their own families through a wider lens. Families are all complicated to some degree, certainly mine was, but in this book I also explore the times when there was just love there. That's part of our story too.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 21, 2008
A compelling look at the Reagan family through the eyes of daughter Patti Davis. It isn't quite a Mommie Dearest but it is straightforward. I was intrigued by the portrait it painted and I was also pleased to see that, by the time her father died in 2004, Patti and her mother had resolved some of the differences exposed in this book.
June 18, 2020
This book was written by Patti Davis who, if you do not know, is the daughter of Ronald Reagan.
It is sort of a Memoir and a Bio of her life. Let me tell you..there's alot to chew on here. I absolutely loved reading all about Patti Davis, who, if one does not know her story, is so different then what one would expect her to be like.
For people who do not like non fiction it will not be for them. But I read many Non Fiction and plenty of Memoirs and this is certainly up there. I really enjoyed this book and found Patty to be authentic, smart, sassy and very human
Obviously her politics are very different from her dad's. She grew up in Woodstock times an d was a bit of a hippy herself. She chronicles many of her relationships here as well. For example:
I did not know when I started reading this that Patti had a long term relationship with a member of the Eagles, which is also chronicled here. I happen to be a big fan of the Eagles AND a political junkie so this book absolutely worked for me!
But it is about family as well. The books runs the gamut and was so interesting. I really do recommend it to Non Fiction readers such as myself.
Highly recommended.
It is sort of a Memoir and a Bio of her life. Let me tell you..there's alot to chew on here. I absolutely loved reading all about Patti Davis, who, if one does not know her story, is so different then what one would expect her to be like.
For people who do not like non fiction it will not be for them. But I read many Non Fiction and plenty of Memoirs and this is certainly up there. I really enjoyed this book and found Patty to be authentic, smart, sassy and very human
Obviously her politics are very different from her dad's. She grew up in Woodstock times an d was a bit of a hippy herself. She chronicles many of her relationships here as well. For example:
I did not know when I started reading this that Patti had a long term relationship with a member of the Eagles, which is also chronicled here. I happen to be a big fan of the Eagles AND a political junkie so this book absolutely worked for me!
But it is about family as well. The books runs the gamut and was so interesting. I really do recommend it to Non Fiction readers such as myself.
Highly recommended.
March 31, 2008
Wow...I took this book on a camping trip and paid little attention to my breathtaking surroundings because I was so engrossed in this book. Patti lived an incredible life- sleeping with a Beach Boy, dealing with a stand-offish dad who happens to be the President, having a mom at arms length and never truly feeling loved. This girl has done a lot and seen a lot. I appreciate that she took full responsibility for her actions.
March 29, 2013
I believe Patti Davis. I have personally seen the conflict within a family when a conservative's old fashioned idealized view of American values runs contradictory with the way they conduct their daily life. I've always found it interesting that Ronald Reagan's children with his first wife (Maureen and Michael) embraced his political views while the children he raised in his house with Nancy (Patti and Ron) rejected them.
I feel sorry for Patti and in many ways I relate to her. I suspect that she felt compelled to speak of the Ronald and Nancy Reagan she knew, since their public image was so different from what she experienced being raised by them. Sadly, the effort makes her appear selfish and mean spirited. Meanwhile, the Reagans will be remembered as great Americans. It's a shame they spent more time tending their image than they did parenting their children.
I feel sorry for Patti and in many ways I relate to her. I suspect that she felt compelled to speak of the Ronald and Nancy Reagan she knew, since their public image was so different from what she experienced being raised by them. Sadly, the effort makes her appear selfish and mean spirited. Meanwhile, the Reagans will be remembered as great Americans. It's a shame they spent more time tending their image than they did parenting their children.
July 3, 2008
Patti Davis, despite the best efforts of her ghost writer, comes off as a complete airhead in this, her memoir of growing up as Ronald & Nancy Reagan's daughter. She complains of her mother's abuse of prescription drugs and her father's absenteeism. She disagrees with her parents' politics, but then goes on to describe her pretty charmed life of being given the best rehab treatments and chilling in her own sweet pad in SoCal all on her parents' dime. It was interesting to read her take on her parents, but mostly annoying with its whole poor little rich girl bent.
October 26, 2010
As a woman in her 40s, I expected a little distance from the many childhood wrongs and "poor me" attitude. Instead of imagining what a certain look means, why don't you just ask?! A very scattered story without any growth. I'll not look for more books by her, but may want to read her siblings' and mother's books to get a clearer picture.
September 12, 2021
What I liked most about this book was that Patti takes a look at her life, and the lives of her parents, almost from a therapist's point of view. Patti writes in a very clear manner, and the book is presented chronologically. It was a very quick read for me, as I kept wanting to hear how she turned her life around.
November 20, 2009
This book provided an insight into the Reagan Family. I read this one after reading Nancy Reagans book "My Turn". I think Patti gave a very insightful honest impression of being the Reagans daughter.
April 4, 2010
All the dirt on the Reagans by their daughter. Dishy!
October 10, 2014
I hadn't expected so much heartache.
January 5, 2015
An interesting story of family dynamics!
January 11, 2012
Ronald Reagan was probably my favorite President, even though I didn’t vote for him the first go-round. Why was he my favorite? Because he managed to play a high-stakes poker game with the Russians and caused them to fold with his bluffs. He was viewed as a loose-cannon by this country’s enemies and taken seriously least someone found their face pounded into the sand. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the man because he was one of the few Presidents to have a successful policy in both domestic and foreign relations. He brought inflation, which was started by Nixon (my LEAST favorite president) and exacerbated by Ford and Carter, under control. He lowered taxes, raised revenues and began the longest-running bull market in the history of this country. But I know that someone like that cannot be perfect.
This auto-biography by his daughter, Patti, exposed the ugly underbelly of the Reagan family. But it also reads like the tempermental tantrums of a flower-child and hippie of the 60’s and 70’s. She’s only 2 years older than I, but is as entrenched in her views as her father was in his.
I enjoyed reading her story, though. Not all of it was as believable as I think she meant it to be, but it was her view. But I had empathy because I grew up in a wealthy town and knew kids like her who had parents so focused on “everything being perfect” that they couldn’t handle any deviation from what they perceived as “the norm.”
I have to admit a slight crush on Patti, even though there is a wide political gulf between us. But, from my vantage point, I can understand where SHE is coming from as well as understanding where her mom and dad did. Her book also explains a lot of the smirking and eyebrow-raising done by many of those in the acting profession during that time.
I would recommend this to all of my Reagan-worshipping friends.
This auto-biography by his daughter, Patti, exposed the ugly underbelly of the Reagan family. But it also reads like the tempermental tantrums of a flower-child and hippie of the 60’s and 70’s. She’s only 2 years older than I, but is as entrenched in her views as her father was in his.
I enjoyed reading her story, though. Not all of it was as believable as I think she meant it to be, but it was her view. But I had empathy because I grew up in a wealthy town and knew kids like her who had parents so focused on “everything being perfect” that they couldn’t handle any deviation from what they perceived as “the norm.”
I have to admit a slight crush on Patti, even though there is a wide political gulf between us. But, from my vantage point, I can understand where SHE is coming from as well as understanding where her mom and dad did. Her book also explains a lot of the smirking and eyebrow-raising done by many of those in the acting profession during that time.
I would recommend this to all of my Reagan-worshipping friends.
February 16, 2020
I would say this is more memoir than autobiography; heck she wrote it like at age 40 and it is really about her growing up and specifically in a dysfunctional Reagan family. Music fans may enjoy in the insights into Dennis Wilson (Beach Boys) who she had a relationship, as well as in the 1970s, living with Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon. (Together they co-wrote the song "I Wish You Peace" which appeared on Eagles album One of These Nights and that story is here.) She is quite candid about her love life as well as getting her tubes tied and then untied. In this bare and forthcoming telling, she is also an open book about her own substance abuse, which started with the prescription pills from the family medicine cabinet abused by her mother while Nancy Reagan hypocritically promoted "Just Say No". This was the mother verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive to her, which in a complex way she appreciated much more than the cold aloofness of her remote father, Ronald Reagan.
This book seeks to specifically refute some things in Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography, such as a relationship between Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra and verifies some things in that book, like Davis' one-night stand with Kris Kristofferson reported back to her family by her Secret Service detail.
This book seeks to specifically refute some things in Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography, such as a relationship between Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra and verifies some things in that book, like Davis' one-night stand with Kris Kristofferson reported back to her family by her Secret Service detail.
July 8, 2020
Very insightful and interesting, but I get the feeling that Patti exhibits a lot of bitterness and resentment towards her parents and how they raised her, but with them in the spotlight all of the time, it makes sense. The tone was kind of whiny/victim/woe-is-me. I’m not saying things didn’t happen the way she claims, but there are always two sides to the story.
June 2, 2014
See "Mommy Dearest"
September 20, 2025
1.
i finished this book within the span of 3 days, yes, all 335 pages. i think the primary reason why i finished this book in such a short timeframe was because i was so immersed with her narrative. she was the left-wing activist daughter of right-wing conservative republican president and first lady ronald and nancy reagan, so who wouldn’t wanna be interested in her story, right?
before reading this book, i had finished “dear mom and dad: a letter about family, memory, and the america we once knew”. so as you can imagine, prior before reading this book, i already had my own set of expectations for it. this was primarily due to the author, patti davis, always addressing this book in interviews aired some time after she had published this book, and even in “dear mom and dad” as, in her own words, “the book that shall not be named”.
due to that, i thought that this book would offer a more negative and controversial narrative of the reagans as parents and as human beings, and in doing so, paint the reagans as this distant and dysfunctional family, and as you can imagine, stir up controversy—which it did. but for some reason i always thought that this book would leave the empathetic viewpoint out of the equation, as i was certain that—during this period of time—it hadn’t entered patti davis’ narrative yet due to the fact that this was written before her father’s alzheimer’s diagnosis, and because of that, her family has not yet found the reason to put aside their animosity for something much more important—the bigger picture.
so knowing that, in this book, she was already able to look at her family with enough clarity and with enough perspective to look beyond her parents as parents and as human beings that had childhood traumas, just as she portrayed with her narrative in her recent novel “dear mom and dad”—layers this book with more depth and complexity which oddly enough makes me see patti in an entirely different light. overall, i’m glad that she was now able to find the closure she needed, which she not-so-subtly yearned for in this book—and finally close this major chapter of her life, once and for all.
2.
nancy reagan was an insecure, cruel, and vile woman who needed to have control in everything because she just has to have this sense of belonging. she couldn’t stand anybody who got too close to her ronnie, and that includes his kids who she abused both emotionally and physically.
i finished this book within the span of 3 days, yes, all 335 pages. i think the primary reason why i finished this book in such a short timeframe was because i was so immersed with her narrative. she was the left-wing activist daughter of right-wing conservative republican president and first lady ronald and nancy reagan, so who wouldn’t wanna be interested in her story, right?
before reading this book, i had finished “dear mom and dad: a letter about family, memory, and the america we once knew”. so as you can imagine, prior before reading this book, i already had my own set of expectations for it. this was primarily due to the author, patti davis, always addressing this book in interviews aired some time after she had published this book, and even in “dear mom and dad” as, in her own words, “the book that shall not be named”.
due to that, i thought that this book would offer a more negative and controversial narrative of the reagans as parents and as human beings, and in doing so, paint the reagans as this distant and dysfunctional family, and as you can imagine, stir up controversy—which it did. but for some reason i always thought that this book would leave the empathetic viewpoint out of the equation, as i was certain that—during this period of time—it hadn’t entered patti davis’ narrative yet due to the fact that this was written before her father’s alzheimer’s diagnosis, and because of that, her family has not yet found the reason to put aside their animosity for something much more important—the bigger picture.
so knowing that, in this book, she was already able to look at her family with enough clarity and with enough perspective to look beyond her parents as parents and as human beings that had childhood traumas, just as she portrayed with her narrative in her recent novel “dear mom and dad”—layers this book with more depth and complexity which oddly enough makes me see patti in an entirely different light. overall, i’m glad that she was now able to find the closure she needed, which she not-so-subtly yearned for in this book—and finally close this major chapter of her life, once and for all.
2.
nancy reagan was an insecure, cruel, and vile woman who needed to have control in everything because she just has to have this sense of belonging. she couldn’t stand anybody who got too close to her ronnie, and that includes his kids who she abused both emotionally and physically.
October 24, 2024
I thought this was a well written memoir of a very troubled young woman longing to be loved and understood. She takes us through her experiences while searching for answers about her families disfunction.
Some say it was the whining of a well-to-do girl, but privilege doesn't fill the emptiness left by feeling unloved. You can clearly see how Patti was attempting to fill the loneliness left by her fathers distance with other men, only to find further disappointment.
Maybe I can relate a little more because I know what it is like to have distant, often disapproving parents.
Some say it was the whining of a well-to-do girl, but privilege doesn't fill the emptiness left by feeling unloved. You can clearly see how Patti was attempting to fill the loneliness left by her fathers distance with other men, only to find further disappointment.
Maybe I can relate a little more because I know what it is like to have distant, often disapproving parents.
July 10, 2025
Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti, writes about her childhood and early adulthood. From her perspective. Being the daughter of the governor of California and later the president of the US puts you in the limelight. But what happens if your parents act the same as their parents did? That they didn't change with the times? very insightful story.
January 3, 2024
Some readers will not appreciate this story of an emotionally difficult family of Reagan's and bad parenting. I found it refreshingly honest well written and enjoyable reading. You don't need to be a fan of Ronald Reagan.
I recommend for those who had nasty childhoods and frustrations. They can relate to the trauma. The other readers may not care for it because they won't understand.
Many funny anecdotes also
I recommend for those who had nasty childhoods and frustrations. They can relate to the trauma. The other readers may not care for it because they won't understand.
Many funny anecdotes also
December 22, 2012
I found Patti Davis to be very selfish in the book. I doubt that that was her intention. I know that she has since changed her opinion on her parents and probably regrets the decision to write the book in the first place. While I found Ms. Davis less than admirable I did enjoy her book.
September 19, 2007
Read this one as Fred drove approx. 100 miles an hour to get us from South Hadley, Mass back to the Hermitage Eat N' Park. Got me thinking that I should move to Topanga Canyon someday.
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July 24, 200892D
Read
July 24, 2008kkk
September 18, 2008
Really liked this book. It was my fith book on Reagan and it added an interesting piece to the puzzel.
May 18, 2009
Ronald and Nancy Reagan's daughter's autobiography
September 30, 2013
Perception is reality.
August 31, 2015
HATED THIS BOOK SO MUCH, IT'S IN A LANDFILL SOMEWHERE BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE SHOULD READ THIS TRIPE!
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews