The President & Mrs. Reagan: An American Love Story - Hardcover

As the Reagans' favourite photographer, Harry Benson has long enjoyed a special relationship with the former first family of the USA, photographing them numerous times. Nancy Reagan invited Benson to photograph the couple together one last time, a bittersweet occasion given the former president's Alzheimer's disease. That portrait and others spanning nearly 40 years are gathered together in this volume, which also contains an introduction by Patti Davis about her parents, as well as Benson's own memories of his encounters with the Reagans.

A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Harry Benson became a photojournalist working for English newspapers in his early twenties. Assigned to cover the Beatles by the London Daily Express, he accompanied them to America in 1964 and made New York his base. He began working for Life magazine in 1967 and continued to work for the magazine until it closed. He subsequently worked for People magazine, shooting over 100 of its covers. He is currently under contract to Vanity Fair, GQ, and the New Yorker. He was twice named magazine photographer of the year by the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the National Press Photographer's Association and was twice the recipient of the Leica Medal of Excellence. He has also received the Madeline Dane Ross Award from the Overseas Press Club. He has had 35 one-man exhibitions of his photographs. He lives in New York City with his wife Gigi and his two daughters. His many books include the recent Harry Benson: 50 Years in Pictures (Abrams, 2001). Patti Davis is the author of five books, including The Way I See It: An Autobiography (Putnam, 1992); House of Secrets (Birch Lane, 1991); and Angels Don't Die (HarperCollins, 1995), a spiritual memoir about the author's father. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Ladies' Home Journal, Rosie, and Harper's Bazaar. Davis is currently working on a novel. She lives in Santa Monica, California.