Reagan | Council on Foreign Relations

AMAZON BEST BOOK OF SEPTEMBER 2024  _NEW YORK TIMES_’ NONFICTION BOOK TO READ FALL 2024 _NEW YORK TIMES_’ TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2024 _NEW YORKER_ ESSENTIAL READS OF 2024 More on: United States

Presidential History Politics and Government 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 recreates 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. More on: United States Presidential History Politics and Government