In this "monumental and impressive" biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president's aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides "the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date" (Robert Mann).
The story begins not in star-studded Hollywood but in the cradle of the Midwest, small-town Illinois, where Reagan was born in 1911 to Nelle Clyde Wilson, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer, and Jack Reagan, a struggling, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a handsome young man, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard, whose early successes mirrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan's life against American history, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor.
The world of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant, not only in Reagan's coming-of-age in such classics as Knute Rockne and Kings Row but during the twilight of his film career, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of General Electric Theater, which established his bona fides as one of the leading conservative voices of the time. Indeed, the leap to California governor in 1966 seemed almost preordained, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift.
Reagan's 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist who signed pro-abortion and gun control bills as governor, cut deals with Democrats in both Sacramento and Washington, and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. A master communicator, Reagan revived America's spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan's opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.
With its revelatory insights, Reagan: His Life and Legend is no apologia, depicting a man with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of "trickle-down economics," the Cold War's end, the Iran-Contra affair, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan's family, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.
About the Author :
Max Boot, historian and foreign-policy analyst, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the Washington Post. His New York Times bestseller The Road Not Taken was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Review :
"[I]mpeccably researched and thoroughly compelling… thanks to Boot’s enormously readable and scrupulously honest book, we know more than ever before about this complicated, frustrating and yet oddly magnetic man."
"This biography is a doggedly researched, deeply readable character study, set in a bygone era of politics. "
"[A] generous yet sharply perceptive biography"
"[A] readable and insightful biography"
"[Reagan’s] remoteness has frustrated biographers… Max Boot, a historian who advised Republican presidential candidates but broke with his party over Mr Trump, has triumphed over predecessors. He marshals a huge amount of research to provide a full account of Reagan’s life, from his boyhood in Illinois to his decline into Alzheimer’s."
"This is a timely and fascinating book, just what we need to understand, and perhaps transcend, our current age of political paralysis and polarization. Understanding Reagan is key to understanding our politics today."
"This comprehensive biography—relying on a decade of research, unearthed records, and revealing interviews—separates man from myth, offering a compelling and clear-eyed portrait of this consequential president and the country he shaped."
"a new and masterly biography of Ronald Reagan"
"[Reagan] aims to be the definitive biography, and it succeeds. It’s a thoughtful, absorbing account."
"A judicious biography. "
"[Boot] is a thorough biographer… He recognises the fundamental tension in Reagan (and in his administration) between pragmatism and moralism."
"Intelligent, elegant and engrossing"
"[A] magisterial new biography… The first important Reagan biography of the post-Reagan era"
"Reagan is the best, most balanced biography to date of the man and his era... [A] fine book"
"[A] remarkable book… One of the particular reasons the book is so welcome is it really is the first comprehensive and fair biography of Reagan we’ve had. There have been hagiographies in the past, and hatchet jobs, but Max Boot looks with a clear eye at both the triumphs and the failures."
