MSNBC host Chris Matthews’ most contemporary non-fiction e-book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked has struggled to maintain % with a few of its conservative competition on the New York Occasions best agents checklist. A new evaluation in this weekend’s Times Book Overview isn’t more likely to help the placement.

Reviewer David Greenberg describes Matthews as a cable information “snarling head” who basically will get his historical past unsuitable when describing the relationship between President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., for whom he labored as an aide. “For these familiar with his brand of confidently asserted overgeneralization,” Greenberg writes of Matthews, “the ebook is ready what you would predict.”

Greenberg goes on to debunk the belief that Reagan and O’Neill “put politics aside at 6 o’clock” to make compromise deals that will assist both Democrats and Republicans. “It’s a nice concept for a guide,” he writes, “if best it had been authentic.” He questions the “false symmetry” Matthews sets up between the two men, who he says were not on the same stage in the case of political affect. Mocking Matthews’ emphasis on Reagan’s “Irishness,” Greenberg concludes, “He has a high quality appreciation of blarney.”

Overall, its a highly damning evaluation that utterly discounts the primary-hand nature of Matthews’ account.

Learn the whole overview at NYTimes.com.

[photograph by the use of Wikimedia Commons]

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