Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography.

• Author: McElwaine, Sandra

Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography. Kitty Kelley. Simon & Schuster $24.95. Breathes there a soul inside the beltway who has not heard about this book? The 528-page tome, which spiraled instantly to the top of the best-seller list, has been trumpeted on the front page of The New York Times; satirized by Garry Trudeau; criticized on the covers of both Time and Newsweek; disputed by People; and rehashed on every major and minor talk show in the country.

What's caught the public's imagination is a lurid tale of conspicuous consumption and clandestine affairs-a portrait of a two-faced harridan who reigned at 1600 Pennsylvania like Marie Antoinette. Indeed, this unauthorized biography has got decadence to burn. But to Kelley's-and Nancy's-credit, it is also a study of a dealmaker of remarkable proportions: a master of manipulation who, once she paid her dues, made sure she'd never again have to pay her own way. Forget 01' Blue Eyes. The Nancy we see here is the antithesis of the nooner-inclined romantic-the relentlessly acquisitive bitch. Throughout her life, she chafed at paying for the smallest details, even toilet paper, yet when she decamped from the White House, it took nine U.S. Air Force transport planes to remove her worldly possessions. Through a series of canny business transactions, a woman born near the railroad tracks in Queens had parlayed a civil servant's salary into half a century of style. Nancy had an instinct for the deal early on: selling her personalized hand towels to another Nancy at Smith; scheming as a starlet to catch the preoccupied president of the Screen Actors Guild. But as she aged, she traded the small-time hustle for more elaborate moves. In 1956, while her husband was the spokesman for General Electric, the company agreed to electrify the couple's home in exchange for publicity. G.E. invested $100,000 worth of equipment-a retractable canopy roof, a small theater, a heated swimming pool with underwater lights, even electric drapes-in the house, making it a model of high-voltage living. This set in motion a lifelong pattern of trading promotion for possessions. In time, freebies would become her way of life. After Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, Nancy was appalled by the governor's mansion, particularly its tacky purple chairs. So Reagan's kitchen cabinet bought and lavishly furnished a Sacramento house for the pair-and then donated 1 acres to the state for the construction of a new, $1.4...