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Reagan: His Life and Legend
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About This Book
Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician—America's fortieth president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography. From best-selling biographer Max Boot comes this revelatory portrait, a decade in the making, of Ronald Reagan, the actor-turned-politician whose telegenic leadership ushered in a transformative conservative era in American politics. Despite his fame as a Hollywood star and television host, Reagan remained an enigma—a man of profound contradictions—even to those closest to him. Believing that this inscrutability contributed to Reagan's appeal, Max Boot sought to reveal the real man behind the mythology. Drawing on more than a hundred new interviews and thousands of newly available documents, Reagan tells the epic story of the Depression-era poor boy who transfixed the nation. Yet Boot, a one-time Republican policy advisor, offers no apologia, depicting a man with a Manichean, good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing. Providing revelatory insights into "trickle-down economics," the Cold War's end, the Iran-Contra affair, and so much more, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.
Reviews
"Ambitious … Reagan could very well be the last biography of its kind to draw on so many personal conversations with key primary sources … Perhaps not surprisingly given Boot's experience in foreign policy, he's especially astute at unpacking Reagan's diplomacy."
"Generous yet sharply perceptive ..."
"Boot fails to give a sense of what might seem most important to grapple with today: the fate of Reagan's conservative movement in the 1980s ..."
"Boot's clear-headed biography brims with insightful anecdotes and clears away myth to give a more solid portrait of a remarkable politician."
"Boot provides fascinating vignettes of Reagan's upbringing and entertainment career ..."
"Dives straight into the contradictions that defined the man ..."
"One might expect, given Boot's trajectory, that this would be a full-throated defense of Reagan, the Last Good Republican."
"A prodigiously researched, satisfying presidential bio."
"It makes for an unusually middle-of-the-road and not very revealing portrait."
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