Reagan: The Life - Softcover

H. W. Brands

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307951146 ISBN 13: 9780307951144

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016

Synopsis

From master storyteller and "New YorkTimes" bestselling Historian H. W. Brands comes the definitive biography of avisionary and transformative president
In his magisterial new biography, H. W. Brands brilliantly establishes Ronald Reagan as one of the two great presidents of the twentieth century, a true peer to Franklin Roosevelt. "Reagan" conveys with sweep and vigor how the confident force of Reagan s personality and the unwavering nature of his beliefs enabled him to engineer a conservative revolution in American politics and play a crucial role in ending communism in the Soviet Union. Reagan shut down the age of liberalism, Brands shows, and ushered in the age of Reagan, whose defining principles are still powerfully felt today.
""Employing archival sources not available to previous biographers and drawing on dozens of interviews with surviving members of Reagan s administration, Brands has crafted a richly detailed and fascinating narrative of the presidential years. He offers new insights into Reagan s remote management style and fractious West Wing staff, his deft handling of public sentiment to transform thetax code, and his deeply misunderstood relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on which nothing less than the fate of the world turned.
" Reagan" is a storytelling triumph, an irresistible portrait of an underestimated politician whose pragmatic leadership and steadfast vision transformed the nation."

About this title

Review:

"H.W. Brands new biography tells the [Reagan] story as well as you could ask for in a single volume. A lucid and witty writer, Mr. Brands lays out the facts in short chapters that bounce along like one of the bare-fisted walloping action films that Reagan once starred in. He has a talent for letting his sources speak for themselves... Illuminating. Mr. Brands recounts Reagan s triumphs and the scandals even-handedly."
" --The Economist

"Brands is the rare academic historian who can write like a best-selling novelist. Through meticulous research, he recreates decades-old dialogue and puts the reader inside the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and the house inReykjavik, Icelandwhere Reagan and Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachevdebated the fate of the world and laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War." --"USA Today"

"Reagan" is an engaging study of a man who Brands says defeated Soviet communism and achieved a halfway economic revolution. Drawing on Reagan s diary, speeches, statements, letters and memoirs, and on interviews with the president s aides, Brands tells a briskly paced story ... Reagan s legacy continues to fuel the ideas and frame the choices facing his would-be successors, and this astute biography is further evidence that the 40th president continues to cast a long shadow over a still largely conservative political order." --"Washington Post"

About the Author:

H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A"New York Times"bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for"The First American"and"Traitor to His Class.""

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0307951146
• ISBN 13: 9780307951144
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 832