2024 the best family review
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(as of Nov 19, 2024 22:23:15 UTC - Details)
Ronald Reagan's personal attorney Roy Miller was a California success story. The Miller family's friends could never have imagined the horror and darkness that were to follow as Michael, the Miller's youngest son killed and raped his own mother.
ASIN : B00HCKT1EM
Publisher : Grand Central Publishing (June 3, 2014)
Publication date : June 3, 2014
Language : English
File size : 1411 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 362 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 0446602353
Reviewer: Deal Shopper
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very good price
Review: Itâs a hardcover book
Reviewer: D. Jester
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: OK, but strays a bit
Review: I found the original topic of this book to be interesting, if a bit gruesome. However, one thing McDougal does in this book is to give too much irrelevant information. We don't really need to know what the grandfather of the primary subject of the book looked like, nor do we need to know about interactions between William French Smith and Ronald Reagan, since they have little to do with the book. In my opinion, much of this was filler material to make what should have been about 150 pages into 320. To be fair to the author, publishers often insist on excessive copy these days, as they find it easier to sell "thick" books than "thin" ones. Using that paradigm, though, most of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway would never have been published. Also, McDougal seems to feel it neccessary to periodically interject his negative opinions of Reagan's policies into the book, and while I guess he has the right, as the book is not a newspaper, it at times becomes distracting.
Reviewer: Stephanos
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Political agenda ruins the true-crime
Review: I read a lot of true crime. Only rarely do I toss out the book after reading. In this case I did. I was vexed throughout by the author's insistent and wholly unnecessary political message. Every chapter has a dig or two or three at Ronald Reagan. OK, we get it. The author absolutely HATES Reagan. But letting this bizarre compulsion get in the way of telling what could have been a riveting true-crime story is maybe slightly neurotic and certainly bad story-telling. It is obvious that the author chose this particular crime because the victim's husband happened to be the personal attorney for -- you know who -- the anti-Christ himself -- Ronald Reagan.So rather than earning a place on my bookshelf beside the likes of Jack Olsen, Ann Rule, Jim Schutze, Jerry Bledsoe and other notables, this book went into the trash. And Dennis McDougal has earned a place on my author ignore list.
Reviewer: Rochelle Reisdorf
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good service
Review: Everything great
Reviewer: MartinMom
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: incredible writing
Review: It feels as if the author knew the man intimately, but apparently he never met him personally. That's what I call First Class investigative writing.
Reviewer: Dan Bogaty
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Quite the Love-Hate Relationship
Review: Dennis McDougal's extensively researched and professionally written work of true crime, IN THE BEST OF FAMILIES, tells the story of the Miller family. In early 1980s, the family lived in southern California and consisted of Roy Miller Jr., his wife, Marguerite, and their sons, the older Jeffrey and Michael.Roy was a conservative Republican, along with his family a regular churchgoer, and an influential tax lawyer who was a force in the business community and became one of Ronald Reagan's personal lawyers. He is portrayed as an essentially kind man, who was yet an aloof father, one whose business obligations and interests superceded his attention to his family.Marguerite is depicted as an energetic and compulsive woman whom some loved and who annoyed others with her constant chattering and her often overbearing behavior. While there is no doubt that she loved her family, her compulsiveness led her to schedule, hour by hour, her sons daily activities throughout their entire lives.As for the boys, Jeffrey was a normal teenager who as he progressed in college developed an extreme ideation relating to a form of fundamentalist Christianity and developed schizophrenia. While still in his early 20s he killed himself while confined to a mental institution.Michael, in marked contrast to Jeffrey, was from childhood somewhat of an outcast, an odd person who couldn't figure out how to fit in socially with his peers. And due to Marguerite's combination of love for her son and general obsessive mania, filled his life with specialists - some special and most not so - with the goal of "curing" him. So beginning as a teenager Michael endured years of people who were serially hired to hypnotize him; train him in accordance with Marguerite's nutritional ideas (the boys were not allowed to eat, among other items, ice cream or meat); psychoanalyze him; deprogram him; sensorally deprive him; and sometimes just scream at him. And this is merely a partial listing. Further, while some of these new-age gurus were legitimate, just as many were frauds of the school of practitioners who, to paraphrase Mel Brooks, put their hands on a rock, looked up at the sky and said, "I am a counselor." They ordained themselves. It's fair to say that the combination of Marguerite and her legion of specious specialists hastened Michael's own schizophrenia.The final act took place on a morning in March 1983 when Michael achieved, within the space of less than an hour, a trifecta consisting of matricide, incest, and necrophilia.IN THE BEST OF FAMILIES is a fast and fascinating read. Since there was never any doubt about who was responsible for Marguerite's death, the book contains little in the way of police work; and since the only issue at the trial was Michaels's competence, the trial section is brief and to the point.There is clearly a variety of opinion about this book among the Amazon reviewers, and most did not like it as much as I did, but I would recommend it to any fan of the genre.
Reviewer: melissa
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: skipped a lot of pages
Review: some chapters were so boring they just needed to be skipped. They really were unnecessary to be put in and too up space
Reviewer: patricia
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: long and boring..
Review: This story was creepy in its in-depth factual background of the parents....long and boring.....the story became extra creepy with Michael talking obscenely to his mother and she thinks nutrition is the answer......weird.....wouldn't recommend this...no suspense....dry...
Reviewer: Blanche Devereaux
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is the story of serious mental illness and is devastating effects on a family as it goes untreated. The parents and the best intentions, a nice home and no money problems. They tried their very best to help their two sons both suffering from schizophrenia but failed to recognize how grave this illness is and that it is not treated with special diets and sessions with quacks. I think that facing the cruel reality was probably very difficult for both mother and father.The book got interesting past page 100. It is too full of unnecessary details and info on some of the family's parents friends and colleagues. The reader doesn't really want or need to know about everything they did and accomplished in their lifetime. I admit I skipped a few pages. Some info is necessary but this was over the top. I almost gave up on finishing the book but in the end I'm glad I did.