1984, first edition, from Writers and Readers
David Smith & Melinda Gebbie
Reagan for Beginners
Original price $4.95, purchase price $2.95
Very worn paperback
C+
Smith returns, this time with Gebbie as illustrator. She's somewhat better than Mosher, with a "fat cat" as her recurring motif. However, the leap to advocacy for socialism feels more like it comes out of nowhere than in Smith's Orwell. He does a nice job of showing Reagan's flaws-- and Carter's, not as different as you might think-- but there's no clearcut reason why instead of "Demopublicans" the U.S. should (have) embrace(d) revolution.
The "For Beginners" series is still around, with neither of these two 1984 titles though. They do have Barack Obama for Beginners, and, no, I don't know when they decided to start using full names in the title. (It seems to still mostly be single names, which I think sounds snappier.)
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