President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination
Twenty-five years after Ronald Reagan became president, Richard Reeves has written a surprising and revealing portrait of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. As he did in his bestselling books President Kennedy: Profile of Power and President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Reeves has used newly declassified documents and hundreds of interviews to show a president at work day by day, sometimes minute by minute.
President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination is the story of an accomplished politician, a bold, even reckless leader, a gambler, a man who imagined an American past and an American future—and made them real. He is a man of ideas who changed the world for better or worse, a man who understands that words are often more important than deeds. Reeves shows a man who understands how to be President, who knows that the job is not to manage the government but to lead the nation. In many ways, a quarter of a century later, he is still leading. As his vice president, George H. W. Bush, said after Reagan was shot and hospitalized in 1981: “We will act as if he were here.”
He is a heroic figure if not always a hero. He did not destroy communism, as his champions claim, but he knew it would self-destruct and hastened the collapse. No small thing. He believed the Soviet Union was evil and he had contempt for the established American policies of containment and détente. Asked about his own Cold War strategy, he answered: “We win. They lose!”
Like one of his heroes, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has become larger than life. As Roosevelt became an icon central to American liberalism, Reagan became the nucleus holding together American conservatism. He is the only president whose name became a political creed, a noun not an adjective: “Reaganism.”
Reagan’s ideas were so old they seemed new. He preached an individualism, inspiring and cruel, that isolated and shamed the halt and the lame. He dumbed-down America, brilliantly blending fact and fiction, transforming political debate into emotion-driven entertainment. He recklessly mortgaged America with uncontrolled military spending, less taxation, and more debt.
In focusing on the key moments of the Reagan presidency, Reeves recounts the amazing resiliency of Ronald Reagan, the real “comeback kid.” Here is a seventy-year-old man coming back from a near-fatal gunshot wound, from cancer, from the worst recession in American history. Then, in personal despair as his administration was shredded by the lying and secrets of hidden wars and double-dealing, he was able to forge one of history’s amazing relationships with the leader of “the Evil Empire.” That story is told for the first time using the transcripts of the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings, the climax of an epic story—as if he were here.
Reviews
"Memorable set pieces. The meetings with Gorbachev read like a political thriller. But the one that stands out is the event that forged the Reagan legend: his brush with assassination in 1981...As doctors fought to save the president, blood bubbling out of his mouth, a Secret Service man prayed: 'Oh my God, we've lost him.' Meanwhile back at the White House, his staff haggled over who should run the American government —little realizing of course that the one who did was the genial old man hanging on to life in George Washington University Hospital." The Economist
"President Reagan is a compelling read, fast-paced and scrupulously fair. The account of the Iran-contra affair is particularly gripping. Anbody who is interested in the extraordinary Reagan Presidency needs to reckon with Reeves... There are plenty of other gems... If Reeves were in the thriller business, he would be accused of stretching the bounds of credibility; as things are, readers will have to keep pinching themselves, checking Reeves's footnotes and realizing that, yes, all this really happened." Adrian Wooldridge, The New York Times Book Review
"It is refreshing to read a presidential biography in which the man's public actions — not his private psyche — are the primary focus... Reeves captures Reagan's undeniable charm, presidential aura and ability to inspire Americans with his own vision of an earlier America when things seemed simpler and better. That those times, in reality, were not better for large numbers of Americans did not faze Reagan... He had an old man's strengths: He knew what he believed, and he really didn't care what his opponents thought of him." Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
"Celebrated journalist Richard Reeves takes the same vivid, fly-on-the-wall approach he's previously applied with such success to Nixon and Kennedy, and uses it just as skillfully to take us inside the administration, mind and character of Ronald Reagan... Reeves is particularly strong at portraying Reagan's almost organically intuitive approach to management. Here we have the Gipper's artful delegation of details along the road to fulfilling his short list of grand goals..." Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
"What separates this book from so many others is that Mr. Reeves very subtly has written a post-9/11 assessment of the Reagan Presidency... Putting together a narrative of a much-chronicled Presidency is not for the faint of heart. Richard Reeves, one of the finest journalists of his generation, is made of sterner stuff, and our understanding of Ronald Reagan is the better for it." Terry Golway, New York Observer
"Long one of America's finest political reproters, Richard Reeves has also become one of of the best political biographers. His books, about John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and now Ronald Reagan are indispensable reading for anyone interested in the modern U.S. presidency..." Philip Seib, Dallas Morning News
"In President Reagan:The triumph of Imagination, master political journalist Richard Reeves provides a marvelous behind-the-scenes look at how that performance came together. Using a net work of contacts and sources built up over five decades, Reeves, who previously wrote much-praised chronicles of of the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, spins a fly-on-the-wall, at times day-by-day tale of the power of one man's imagination...." Mark Schogol, Philadelphia Inquirer
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