Customer Reviews

National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations: The Declassified History of U.S. Political and Military Policy, 1981-1991

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Although this book is now a little dated, it is the most important compilation of President Reagan's National Security Decision Directives (NSDD's). At the time of publication the book was groundbreaking for its dissemination of these important foreign policy statements that were up till that time likely only available for research at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Simpson is owed an enormous debt for his hard work in making these documents available for scholars all over the world.

Since its publication, and with the advent of digital history, most of the NSDD's that Simpson used in his book are now available online thanks to the work of the Federation of American Scientists (http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/index.html) and other websites like The Reagan Files (www.thereaganfiles.com) which have digitized thousands of pages of documents from the Reagan Library. Nevertheless, I still recommend this book for anyone writing about the Reagan Administration. The Reagan Files: The Untold Story of Reagan's Top-Secret Efforts to Win the Cold War (Based on Recently Declassified Letters and National Security Council Meeting Minutes) I of course also recommend my book, The Reagan Files: The Untold Story of Reagan's Top-Secret Efforts to WIn the Cold War, which in a way works with Mr. Simpson's book by publishing the minutes of President Reagan's National Security Council meetings, during which Reagan and his staff often formulated the NSDD's contained in Mr. Simpson's work.