Inside Reagan's Navy: The Pentagon Journals

College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2015. Q4 - A first edition (stated) hardcover book SIGNED and inscribed by Chase Untermeyer to previous owner on the half-title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket and book have some bumped corners, light discoloration and shelf wear. 9.25"x6.25", 337 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. The Navy Department was a major center of action during the Reagan Administration under the dynamic and clever Secretary of the Navy John Lehman and his successor, the novelist and Vietnam War hero (later US senator from Virginia) James Webb. Chase Untermeyer's journals bring this important period to life by telling what it was like to be a young Reagan appointee learning the tricks of the bureaucratic trade from his dealings with admirals, generals, congressmen, senior civil servants, and Navy secretaries of brilliance and supreme ego. While serving as an assistant to Vice President George H. W. Bush, Chase Untermeyer concluded that the only way to learn how the US government really works was to leave the silken cocoon of the White House and seek a position in one of the departments or agencies. In March 1983, when offered an appointment as a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, he jumped at the opportunity. After only a year as a "DASN," he was named by President Ronald Reagan as assistant secretary for Manpower & Reserve Affairs, in charge of all personnel issues affecting nearly one million sailors and Marines and a third of a million civilian workers. Inside Reagan's Navy offers an engaging, up-close narrative of Untermeyer's experiences in the Pentagon, interwoven with descriptions of events and people, humorous anecdotes, and telling quotations. As in his earlier book, When Things Went Right: The Dawn of the Reagan-Bush Administration, Inside Reagan s Navy paints a portrait of official Washington during the Reagan years, with its politics, parties, and personalities. Untermeyer's journal charts Vice President Bush's steady progress toward the presidency in 1988 and gives us glimpses of such contemporaries as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Caspar Weinberger, Clarie Boothe Luce, and the young George W. Bush and Laura Bush, fourteen years before they became president and first lady.. Signed by Author. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.