About the author:
\nMax Boot\, historian and foreign-policy analyst\, is \;the J eane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Cou ncil on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the \;Washington Pos t. His \;New York Times \;bestseller \;The R oad Not Taken \;was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biograp hy.
\n\nWith its revelatory insights\, \;Reag an: His Life and Legend \;is no apologia\, depicting a m an with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringin g and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of &ldquo\;trickle- down economics\,&rdquo\; the Cold War&rsquo\;s end\, the Iran-Contra affai r\, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan&rsquo\;s family\, this definit ive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent d ecades.
\nSon of the Midwest\, movie star\, and mesmerizing politici an&mdash\;America&rsquo\;s fortieth president comes to three-dimensional l ife in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography.
\nIn this &ldquo\;monumental and impressive&rdquo\; biography\, Max Boot\, the dist inguished political columnist\, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Rea gan\, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with o ver one hundred of the fortieth president&rsquo\;s aides\, friends\, and f amily members\, as well as thousands of newly available documents\, Boot p rovides &ldquo\;the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date&rdquo\;.
\nThe 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 Cl yde Wilson\, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer\, and Jack Reagan\, a struggling\, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a hand some young man\, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard\, whose early successes m irrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan&rsquo\;s life a gainst American history\, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transi tioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor.
\nThe w orld of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant\, no t only in Reagan&rsquo\;s coming-of-age in such classics as \;Knute Ro ckne \;and \;Kings Row \;but during the twilight of his film c areer\, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in \;Bedtime for Bonzo\, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of \;General Elec tric Theater\, which established his bona fides as one of the leading cons ervative voices of the time. Indeed\, the leap to California governor in 1 966 seemed almost preordained\, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift.
\nReagan&rsquo\;s 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. B oot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story s traight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragma tist 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 Ame rica&rsquo\;s spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan&rsqu o\;s opposition to civil rights over forty years\, reveals how he neglecte d the exploding AIDS epidemic\, and details how America experienced a leve l of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.
\n\nBooks will be available for purchase courtesy of Mac's Backs - Bo oks on Coventry.
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