Reagan bookcover

Reagan

His Life and Legend

Max Boot 

(Author)
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
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Description

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.

Product Details

PublisherLiveright Publishing Corporation
Publish DateSeptember 10, 2024
Pages880
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9780871409447
Dimensions9.2 X 6.5 X 1.9 inches | 2.7 pounds

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.

Reviews

Max Boot... provides an unusually well-balanced and vividly written profile of a man almost as enigmatic as his contemporary the American sphinx Johnny Carson.--No. 1 on Air Mail's, "10 Best Books of 2024"
A movement conservative turned Never Trumper, Boot set out to explore where the G.O.P. went wrong by writing a biography of Ronald Reagan, and the result is a definitive one. Boot idolized Reagan while growing up, but his book is not a defense of Reagan as the Last Good Republican. It takes up Reagan's hostility to civil rights and Medicare, and deems him complicit in the 'hard-right turn' that 'helped set the G.O.P.--and the country--on the path' to Donald Trump. And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could relax his ideology. He was an anti-tax crusader who oversaw large tax hikes, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment who appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice, and a diehard anti-Communist who made peace with Moscow. He had relinquished 'the dogmas of a lifetime, ' Boot writes. This biography carries a pointed message for conservatives: Reagan achieved greatness, Boot argues, by abandoning his ideology.--The New Yorker, "The Best Books of 2024"
This elegant biography of the 40th president stands out for its deep authority and nimble style. Boot, a historian and foreign policy analyst, grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan, but after a decade of interviews and research, he finds himself asking whether his onetime hero paved the way for Donald Trump, the man whose ascent to power led Boot to abandon the right. The book is a landmark work that shows how Reagan emerged from his New Deal roots to become a practiced Red baiter and racist dog whistler before settling into the role of the optimistic all-American elder statesman. "It is no exaggeration," Boot writes, 'to say that you cannot fully comprehend what happened to America in the 20th century without first understanding what happened to Ronald Reagan.'--New York Times, "The 10 Best Books of 2024"
[An] intelligent, elegant and engrossing biography.--Andrew Preston "Literary Review"
[A] generous yet sharply perceptive biography.--Peter Conrad "The Observer"
As seen throughout Reagan, Boot's readable and insightful biography, the future enemy of the Soviet Union was defined by that rural upbringing, with its limitations - insularity, unworldliness, provinciality - balanced by its strengths: an innate decency and politeness, underpinned by a powerful sense of right and wrong.--Philip Johnston "The Daily Telegraph"
Max Boot's new biography of Ronald Reagan deals candidly with aspects of the 40th president's politics that Reagan's worshipers prefer to not see.--Brent Staples "New York Times"
My favorite book of the fall, and one that is quite the beast to read at 880 pages, Reagan takes us inside the mind of the 40th President. Max Boot is an exceptional writer who crafts a compelling and detailed narrative.--John Brandon "Forbes"
One of the most gripping chapters of Reagan focuses on the assassination attempt that seriously wounded the new president in March 1981. In this almost minute-by-minute account -- reminiscent of Robert Caro's superb reporting and writing in his multivolume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson -- a reader learns exactly what happened and what was said. Amazingly, Reagan remained jovial despite the mortal danger. The dozen pages Boot devotes to the shooting and its aftermath are unforgettable.--Robert Schmuhl "Notre Dame Magazine"
Timely, authoritative, and admirably evenhanded... Boot's book strikes a welcome tone of calm, fact-driven appraisal about a subject who continues to attract over-the-top partisan puffery. It is a nuanced portrait of Reagan for this very unnuanced age... It's impossible to read Boot's careful book and hold on to the seductive fallacy that Reagan possessed some sort of magic template for eradicating communist dictatorships or a playbook that could work again today if only applied with enough forceful resolve. And yet Reagan still manages here to come across as the hero that perhaps he was at first for Boot--an architect, if not the sole author, of the Soviet demise, who earned a place in history for helping "to peacefully end a 40-year struggle that could have resulted in nuclear Armageddon.--Susan B. Glasser "Foreign Affairs"
[An] impeccably researched and thoroughly compelling new biography.... 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.--Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times (UK)
"The passage of more than 30 years since he left office," writes Boot, "affords the kind of understanding of his presidency that historians finally achieved only in the 1980s for the Eisenhower administration." Boot says that while a huge number of books about Reagan exist, none could be described as a "definitive biography, which is what I was trying to achieve." Even Reagan's own children have told Boot they learned new things about their father in the book, so perhaps he has succeeded.--Cliff Cunninham "Sun News Austin"
A worthy, impressive example of what a new era in Reagan biography might hold. Boot's book, the product of a decade's careful research, presents the fascinatingly contradictory reality of Reagan...Boot's accounts excels by embracing rather than eliding the paradoxes of Reagan's political career.--Jonathan Darman "Air Mail"
Forty years after Ronald Reagan's last run for the White House, journalist and foreign policy analyst Max Boot constructs the most extensive biography to date of the 40th U.S. president. Boot points to Reagan as a public figure who was famously difficult to know, though the author does his best to capture the 20th century's most dominant conservative by talking with Reagan's associates.-- "Christian Science Monitor"
This remoteness has frustrated previous biographers. But Mr. Boot responds with doggedness, evoking Reagan's early life in small-town Illinois, college years and early forays into politics. Mr. Boot is a gifted enough writer to prevent this accretion of detail from becoming a slog, and Reagan's apparent lack of an inner life becomes a benefit: it keeps the focus on Reagan's actions, which matter far more than a politician's thoughts or feelings. Though his rhetoric may have been strident, his actions, Mr. Boot convincingly argues, were deeply pragmatic. That is what made him so effective when his party never fully controlled Congress. But he also courted segregationists and homophobes for political benefit, even though he professed to hold no racial prejudice.-- "The Economist"
[A] magisterial new biography... Boot has written the first important Reagan biography of the post-Reagan era.... [His] vivid portrait draws on prodigious research.... [This] splendid biography reminds us that Reagan was the leader many Americans felt they needed at a time when they were looking for national restoration, and they may seek his like again.--Geoffrey Kabaservice "Washington Post"
The actor Ronald Reagan started his political career as a New Deal Democrat who fought for social justice. He ended it as the Republican president of the United States. In this biography, Boot -- a notable historian who fell out of love with conservatism as another American president, Donald J. Trump, took over the movement -- tells Reagan's story, tugging at the enigma of his life and searching for the seeds of Trumpism in the works and days of the 40th president.--New York Times Book Review, "19 New Books Coming in September"
While not as hagiographic as the new film, Boot's take on the New Deal Democrat turned demonizer of Medicare & GOP icon is generally sympathetic. It's Reagan the pragmatist & compromiser, say reviews.--Michael Giltz, Parade, "Best New Book Releases This Week"
Reagan: His Life and Legend aims to be the definitive biography, and it succeeds. It's a thoughtful, absorbing account. It's also a surprising one. One might expect, given Boot's trajectory, that this would be a full-throated defense of Reagan, the Last Good Republican. But it is not. Although Boot once felt 'incredulous that anyone could possibly compare Reagan to Trump, ' he now sees 'startling similarities.'... Recent events have forced Boot to ask if Reagan was part of the rot that has eaten away at Republicanism. Boot now sees him as complicit in the "hard-right turn" the Party took after Dwight D. Eisenhower which helped set the G.O.P.--and the country--on the path to Trump.... And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could relax his ideology.... He viewed the world in black-and-white, yet he governed in gray.--Daniel Immerwahr "New Yorker"
[A] gripping new biography...Boot's book enters a crowded field, but stands out for its deep research, lucid prose and command of its subject's broad political and social context....More than half the book covers his life before the presidency, and Boot's careful focus on Reagan's early years untangles many of the knots....Boot is particularly good at depicting 1920s small-town America, and he gives full consideration to how religion shaped Reagan's outlook.--Jennifer Burns "New York Times"
A decade in the making, Boot uses newly unclassified documents, new reporting and analysis, and original interviews with more than 100 sources to craft the possible definitive look at the man.... [Boot writes] deftly and evenhandedly.... So, while every reader will go into his massive work with a set different idea of Reagan the man, by the end of Reagan the book, those ideas may just change a bit. For better or worse.--Bob Ruggiero "Houston Press"
For the person in your life obsessed with presidential biographies, Boot's newest book is a deeply reported look into the life of Ronald Reagan. Covering his childhood, his Hollywood years and, of course, his presidency, Boot portrays a man that is somehow both more ideological and more pragmatic than we might think.--Andrew Limbong "NPR"
Using newly released documents and the perspective of decades, Boot portrays Reagan as a principled conservative, but also a pragmatist who thoughtfully compromised to attain achievable results... Boot's clear-headed biography brims with insightful anecdotes and clears away myth to give a more solid portrait of a remarkable politician.--Booklist, starred review
Max Boot's Reagan biography is superb--in my judgment, definitive. He has achieved what Edmund Morris could not--a coherent and compelling portrait of an enigmatic and elusive figure, one which is also notably fair-minded.--Richard North Patterson, political commentator
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.--Karen Tumulty, author of The Triumph of Nancy Reagan
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.--Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs
This is the definitive Reagan biography that so many of us have been waiting for. Max Boot clears away the myths and presents the real Ronald Reagan, with all of his strengths and also his shortcomings. If you like biographies, you'll love Reagan: His Life and Legend.--General David Petraeus, US Army (Ret.), former CIA director
Well researched and reported accurately. Ronald Reagan was a complicated man, yet a caring one. Max Boot beautifully catches the essence of who he was.--Stuart K. Spencer, Ronald Reagan's political consultant, 1966-1984
An unabashed revisionist history of the 40th president of the U.S....The amount of research Boot conducted is immense, and his portrait of Reagan is enhanced not only by the passage of time since Reagan's administrations, but by the author's 100+ forthright interviews and the availability of more archival materials....Boot's account of the life and times of Reagan is, as promised, no hagiography...A prodigiously researched, satisfying presidential bio.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

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