The collection mainly contains files for four of the books about Ronald Reagan written by Lou Cannon. Included are court documents, fact sheets, interview tapes and transcripts, newspaper and magazine articles, polls, pool reports, presidential statements, press briefings, press kits and schedules, research files, texts of speeches and remarks, and wire service stories.

Lou (Louis S.) Cannon was born in New York City on June 3, 1933. He is an American journalist, non-fiction author, and biographer of Ronald Reagan. He was raised in Reno, Nevada and attended the University of Nevada, Reno, and San Francisco State College. He was state bureau chief for the San Jose Mercury News in the later 1960s, while Reagan was Governor of California. In 1972 he began working for the Washington Post as a political reporter. He became senior White House correspondent for the Washington Post during the Reagan administration and also wrote a weekly syndicated column. In addition to his several works on Ronald Reagan, which are the main focus of this collection, he is the author of Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD (1997).

55.0 linear feet (46 cartons, 6 document boxes, and 132 audiocassettes)

Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.

The collection is open for research.