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H. W. Brands

Reagan: The Life Kindle Edition

by H. W. Brands (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War—and "the rare academic historian who can write like a bestselling novelist" (USA Today)—comes an irresistible portrait of an underestimated politician whose pragmatic leadership and steadfast vision transformed the nation.

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 the tax code, and his deeply misunderstood relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on which nothing less than the fate of the world turned.

Look for H.W. Brands's other biographies: THE FIRST AMERICAN (Benjamin Franklin), ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNION (Ulysses S. Grant), and TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS (Franklin Roosevelt).

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Editorial Reviews

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

“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.” —The Washington Post

“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 in Reykjavík, Iceland where Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev debated the fate of the world and laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War.” —USA Today

“Superb . . . it is hard to imagine a biography of Ronald Reagan that could be more thorough, evenhanded and insightful.” —Dallas Morning News

“A lively and lucid narrative of the life of America’s 40th president. . . . Brands is surely right that Reagan was the most persuasive political communicator since Roosevelt.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Brands’ judicious biography of Ronald Reagan is as much about the art of governing as about the man himself. . . . Reagan emerges as a great but terribly flawed president who managed to reorient government priorities after the exhaustion of liberal administrations and ideas, but one who also burdened the country with enormous debts that his successors had to pay down.” —Star Tribune

“Brands' work draws richly from Reagan's presidential diaries and other recently released sources that earlier biographers couldn't tap. . . . His history of the important meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is detailed and balanced, with the views of both sides given equal weight. These chapters are Brands' best writing, reinforcing the significance of those arms-reduction efforts and both men's insistence on ending the threat of nuclear weapons.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“Brands’ book stands out in the canon of works on Reagan. . . . With an expert’s talent for synthesizing earlier works, access to previously unavailable sources and new interviews, Brands creates a riveting narrative. His prose flows as smoothly as his subject’s speeches, and his insights provide a fresh look at a transformative president that celebrates his accomplishments but never ignores his blunders. A brilliant example of the biographer’s craft, Reagan deftly and boldly provides a balanced portrait of a man whose personality remains elusive but whose legacy continues to resonate.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Readers will be greatly attracted to Brands' skills as a narrative historian . . . [he] delivers high drama in treating Reagan's handling of diplomatic affairs, tensions with the press corps and squabbles with Congress. Few American historians and biographers can compete with Brands as a powerful historical storyteller. Make no mistake, this is a first-rate presidential biography. . . . The definitive biography of Reagan.” —The Oregonian

“Brands is an immensely talented writer . . . [Reagan] is a pleasurable read.” —The Daily Beast

“A keenly researched book, filled with fascinating stories about a young man who escaped Illinois and an alcoholic father to pursue a dream of fame in Hollywood, eventually playing the role of his life as the leader of the free world.” —Tampa Bay Times

“Monumental life of the president whom some worship and some despise—with Brands providing plenty of justification for both reactions. . . . An exemplary work of history.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A superb biographer writing at the top of his game has found the perfect subject for his narrative skills and profound understanding of the American presidency. Over the years H. W. Brands has produced an extraordinary body of historical and biographical works. This is his masterpiece.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Bully Pulpit

“With characteristic skill and insight, H. W. Brands has painted a compelling portrait of a ubiquitous yet still-misunderstood American. From the Midwest to Hollywood to the pinnacle of power, Reagan was at once enigmatic and effective. Read this great new book to see why.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Thomas Jefferson

“A superb American historian has brought us a fascinating, judicious, original, and concise biography of one of the most important presidents in American history. It is impossible to understand the late twentieth century without understanding Ronald Reagan, and H. W. Brands here addresses an impressive range of the key mysteries of the fortieth president's epoch and life.” —Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage

“Ronald Reagan understood what was best about America, and expected the best for it—which is why he led it so successfully. In Reagan, H. W. Brands expresses, with deep, deft, strokes, what will become the accepted view of a great man.” —Richard Brookhiser, author of Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln

“No one loved a good story better than Ronald Reagan. His own story—synonymous with the American Century and reflected in his political evolution from New Deal Democrat to Washington-phobic conservative—has never been told better. Studded with fresh insights, empathetic and yet constructively critical, it may well be H. W. Brands’s finest book. Certainly it confirms Reagan’s place as the conservative FDR, a transforming leader whose influence on his country’s politics and governance is arguably greater than the day he left the White House.” —Richard Norton Smith, author of On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“National treasure H. W. Brands, who gave us the definitive single-volume biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, completes his biographical tour d'horizon of twentieth-century politics with this superb life of Ronald Reagan. In doing so, Brands tracks the paths we wandered through the depression and the Second World War, the battle against communism, and the conservative revolution. How did we get to today’s angry, polarized nation? Read Brands’s life of Reagan, and find out.” —John A. Farrell, author of Clarence Darrow and Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Reagan remembered three things from childhood: that his father was a drunk, that his mother was a saint, and that his ability to make an audience laugh afforded an antidote to life’s insecurities and embarrassments.

“When I was eleven, I came home from the YMCA one cold, blustery, winter’s night,” Reagan recalled decades later. “My mother was gone on one of her sewing jobs, and I expected the house to be empty.” Nelle Reagan worked to supplement her husband’s earnings. “As I walked up the stairs, I nearly stumbled over a lump near the front door; it was Jack lying in the snow, his arms outstretched, flat on his back.” Reagan and his older brother, Neil, called his mother and father by their first names. “I leaned over to see what was wrong and smelled whiskey. He had found his way home from a speakeasy and had just passed out right there. For a moment or two, I looked down at him and thought about continuing on into the house and going to bed, as if he weren’t there. But I couldn’t do it. When I tried to wake him he just snored--loud enough, I suspected, for the whole neighborhood to hear him. So I grabbed a piece of his overcoat, pulled it, and dragged him into the house.”

The boy watched his father during several years and drew inferences. “Jack wasn’t one of those alcoholics who went on a bender after he’d had a run of bad luck or who drowned his sorrows in drink,” Reagan said. “No, it was prosperity that Jack couldn’t stand. When everything was going perfectly, that’s when he let go, especially if during a holiday or family get-together that gave him a reason to do it. At Christmas, there was always a threat hanging over our family. We knew holidays were the most likely time for Jack to jump off the wagon. So I was always torn between looking forward to Christmas and being afraid of its arrival.”

Jack Reagan’s drinking made him an unreliable breadwinner, and the family bounced around Illinois during his younger son’s first decade. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico on February 6, 1911. The family moved to Chicago when he was two, then to Galesburg, to Monmouth, and back to Tampico. The places passed like scenes outside a car window. Reagan remembered a noisy fire engine from Chicago that made him want to be a fireman. America entered World War I in April 1917, when the family was in Galesburg; the soldiers on the troop trains passing through seemed to a six-year-old to embody adventure and heroism. The war ended in November 1918, with the family in Monmouth, where the celebrations almost overwhelmed the lad. “The parades, the torches, the bands, the shoutings and drunks, and the burning of Kaiser Bill in effigy created in me an uneasy feeling of a world outside my own,” he remembered.

The family landed in Dixon when Reagan was nine. The town of ten thousand became his home until he left for college. Jack Reagan pulled himself together a bit, or perhaps Nelle simply put a stop to the serial moves. But as his sons grew into teenagers, they encountered challenges of a different sort. Dixon had few Catholics and disliked most of those. The boys didn’t practice their father’s faith, but the malignant papism the town bullies saw in Jack Reagan was imputed to them, and they were forced to defend themselves, sometimes with fists. More insidious and less amenable to riposte was the scorn they endured on account of Jack’s boozing.

Nelle Reagan explained her husband’s weakness in terms intended to elicit the boys’ sympathy and understanding. “Nelle tried so hard to make it clear he had a sickness that he couldn’t help, and she constantly reminded us of how good he was to us when he wasn’t drinking,” Reagan recalled. Nelle was Scots-English by ancestry, to Jack’s Irish, and she displayed the proverbial thriftiness of the Scot. Not that she had much choice, given her husband’s uncertain earnings. She mended and re-mended Neil’s clothes for passing down to Ronnie. She sent Neil to the butcher to cadge liver for a mythical family cat. She filled the stew pot with oatmeal and passed it off as a delicacy. “I remember the first time she brought a plate of oatmeal meat to the table,” Reagan recounted. “There was a thick, round patty buried in gravy that I’d never seen before. I bit into it. It was moist and meaty, the most wonderful thing I’d ever eaten.”

Nelle schooled her boys in religion, by precept and especially by example. She spent every Sunday at the Disciples of Christ Church and took the boys with her, to Sunday school at first and then to the regular services. She never thought ill of anyone, so far as her sons could tell. “While my father was a cynic and tended to suspect the worst of people, my mother was the opposite,” Reagan remembered. “She always expected to find the best in people and often did, even among the prisoners at our local jail to whom she frequently brought hot meals.” She preached and practiced the Golden Rule. “My mother always taught us: ‘Treat thy neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you.’ ” She put others ahead of herself, and her sons foremost. “While my father was filled with dreams of making something of himself, she had a drive to help my brother and me make something of ourselves.”

In one respect Jack Reagan seemed entirely admirable to his sons. Their youth witnessed the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, which added Catholics, Jews, and immigrants to African Americans as targets of its venom. Jack forbade the boys to see The Birth of a Nation, the D. W. Griffith film that made heroes out of the white-robed vigilantes. In vain did Neil and Ronnie point out that all the other kids were seeing the picture and that, anyway, the Klan in the movie was of a different time and place. “The Klan’s the Klan, and a sheet’s a sheet, and any man who wears one over his head is a bum,” Reagan recalled Jack saying.

Reagan told another story that Jack had told him. On the road for work, Jack checked into a hotel where the proprietor assured him, “You’ll like it here, Mr. Reagan. We don’t permit a Jew in the place.” Jack grabbed his suitcase and turned to leave. “I’m a Catholic,” he declared. “If it’s come to the point where you won’t take Jews, then some day you won’t take me either.” Jack Reagan spent that cold night in his car.

Neil Reagan was socially adept and a good athlete, with little trouble finding a niche after each of the family’s moves. Ronnie, two and a half years younger, wasn’t so lucky. The frequent relocations left him disconcerted. “I was forever the new kid in school,” he remembered with retrospective anxiety. “During one period of four years, I attended four different schools.” Neil’s grace at sports eluded him. “I was small and spent a lot of time at the bottom of pile-ons in sandlot football games. In baseball, I was forever striking out or suffering the indignity of missing an easy fly ball. I was so lousy at baseball that when our group was choosing up sides for a game, I was always the last kid chosen. I remember one time when I was in the eighth grade. I was playing second base and a ball was hit straight toward me but I didn’t realize it. Everybody was looking at me, expecting me to catch it. I just stood there. The ball landed behind me and everybody said, ‘Oh, no!’ ” Decades later the memory still stung. “You don’t forget things like that.”

Some of his trouble was myopia, which glasses partially remedied, albeit at the cost of his being taunted as “Four-Eyes.” He preferred the nickname Dutch, originally for the way Nelle cut his hair. But the damage to his psyche had been done. “I had a lot of trouble convincing myself I was good enough to play with the other kids, a deficiency of confidence that’s not a small matter when you’re growing up in a youthful world dominated by sports and games. I was always the first to think: I can’t make the team. I’m not as good as Jack or Jim or Bill.”

In one respect, though, he was as good as the others. Nelle Reagan contributed to the cultural life of Dixon by organizing amateur performances at her church, where participants delivered passages from books, plays, poems, or speeches they had committed to memory. Nelle performed and loved the experience. She encouraged her sons to join her. Neil accepted readily; Dutch required convincing. But she persisted and eventually won him over. “Summoning my courage,” he recalled, “I walked up to the stage that night, cleared my throat, and made my theatrical debut. I don’t remember what I said, but I’ll never forget the response: People laughed and applauded. That was a new experience for me and I liked it. I liked that approval. For a kid suffering childhood pangs of insecurity, the applause was music.”

The music fed his fondness for stories. Reagan was an early reader, with a sticky memory. The tales of the Rover Boys, of Tarzan and Frank Merriwell, provided escape from his father’s drinking and smoothed the rough edges of life for the new kid struggling to fit in. Someday, he dreamed, his world would be like that of the popular, athletic Merriwell. Stories also provided a rare chance to bond with his father, who taught him how to spin a yarn. “He had a wry, mordant humor,” Reagan remembered of Jack. “He was the best raconteur I ever heard, especially when it came to the smoking-car sort of stories.” Nelle took exception to her husband’s bawdy tales, but on this point her son sided with his father. “Jack always made clear to us that there was a time and place for this sort of anecdote; he drew a sharp line between lusty vulgar humor and filth. To this day I agree with his credo and join Jack and Mark Twain in asserting that one of the basic forms of American humor is the down-to-earth wit of the ordinary person, and the questionable language is justified if the point is based on real humor.”

An inspiring teacher encouraged young Reagan’s storytelling. B. J. Frazer informed the students in his ninth-grade English class that good writing should be entertaining as well as informative. “That prodded me to be imaginative with my essays,” Reagan recalled. “Before long he was asking me to read some of my essays to the class, and when I started getting a few laughs, I began writing them with the intention of entertaining the class. I got more laughs and realized I enjoyed it as much as I had those readings at church.”

His stories displayed various motifs. “ ’Twas the night of Hallowe’en, but nothing was still,” he wrote in one. “The good people went to sleep that memorial”—presumably “memorable”--“Saturday night with the sounds of laughter, running feet, and muffled shouts ringing in their ears. Then they were peaceful, and only then, at twelve o’clock, a gasping, panting roar awakened the town.” The town’s pranksters have been at work in the dark beyond the rail station. “The freight due from the north was vainly fighting to get over a hundred foot stretch of greased track.” Eventually, the engineer coaxes his engine and cars beyond the slippery spot. “But the next morning a greater shock came. The city was transformed, but less beautiful. The telephone poles were artistically draped with porch furniture, signs, and various parts of buggys and wagons. The streets looked like rummage sales, while schools and stores found their doorways piled with representatives of the last nights”--here the sentence ends, short a word or two and an apostrophe. The story concludes with a flourish: “But alas! Except for an occasional chair on a telephone pole, the scene was soon shattered by the respective owners of the collected articles.”

In eleventh grade he crafted a longer tale. “Mark had, with an air of mystery and promise, insisted that I dine with him,” it began. Mark and the narrator are students at Yale--the alma mater of Frank Merriwell—and they are visiting New York City for the day. “Here we were, in one of those little cafes tucked in a cranny just off Broadway, a place without the elegance of famous places, and without the soiled squalor of the Bowery, a place that defied any attempt to classify it.” They overhear two men seated nearby discussing a nefarious plot. “One was a tall dark man with glittering black eyes and a lean hard jaw. His companion, who seemed to do most of the talking, was a swarthy, dark haired man, short and stout with a pointed Van Dyke beard and a pointed waxed mustache. Suddenly we heard the talkative man hiss, ‘Fool! bombs are too bungling. Gas is smooth and silent.’ My heart suddenly cross-blocked my liver and my adams apple drop-kicked a tonsil.” The conspirators depart the restaurant but leave behind a piece of paper, which Mark snatches up. The paper has a diagram of the U.S. Treasury building in Washington. “The word gas seared through my brain like a hurtling meteorite. For outlined in red ink on the map was the complete ventilation system of the Treasury building.” Mark and the narrator stare at each other. “We were speechless. It did not seem possible that two mere undergraduates of Yale should stand alone between this gang of maniacs and the horrible tragedy outlined on that soiled paper.” But they have to try. They race to the local police station and convey their intelligence to the sergeant, who piles them into his squad car to chase down the plotters. They catch them, only to have the desperate pair laugh in their faces. They are not criminals at all, but fugitives from a mental asylum, as Mark discovers from a newspaper conveniently at hand. “He held before our startled eyes a screaming headline, ‘Lunatics Escape. Reward.’ Beneath these startling words were photographs of our new found friends. So the honor of ‘old Eli’ was upheld.”

B. J. Frazer headed Dixon High’s drama program when he wasn’t teaching English, and he encouraged Reagan to try out. Reagan did so gladly, seeking more of that welcome music. By this time he had outgrown a bit of his shyness, not least by discovering a sport, football, that required neither keen eyesight nor particular coordination in those who played the line. Yet the sensitivities of earlier days remained, and performing onstage continued to ease them. “For a teenager still carrying around some old feelings of insecurity, the reaction of my classmates was more music to my ears,” he said. The experience grew more habit-forming with each curtain call. “By the time I was a senior, I was so addicted to student theatrical productions that you couldn’t keep me out of them.” --This text refers to the paperback edition.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of 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

"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

"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 in Reykjavík, Iceland where Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev debated the fate of the world and laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War."
—USA Today

"Superb ... it is hard to imagine a biography of Ronald Reagan that could be more thorough, evenhanded and insightful."
—Dallas Morning News

"A lively and lucid narrative of the life of America’s 40th president ... Brands is surely right that Reagan was the most persuasive political communicator since Roosevelt."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"Brands’ judicious biography of Ronald Reagan is as much about the art of governing as about the man himself ... Reagan emerges as a great but terribly flawed president who managed to reorient government priorities after the exhaustion of liberal administrations and ideas, but one who also burdened the country with enormous debts that his successors had to pay down."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brands' work draws richly from Reagan's presidential diaries and other recently released sources that earlier biographers couldn't tap ... His history of the important meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is detailed and balanced, with the views of both sides given equal weight. These chapters are Brands' best writing, reinforcing the significance of those arms-reduction efforts and both men's insistence on ending the threat of nuclear weapons."
—Philadelphia Inquirer

"Brands’ book stands out in the canon of works on Reagan ... With an expert’s talent for synthesizing earlier works, access to previously unavailable sources and new interviews, Brands creates a riveting narrative. His prose flows as smoothly as his subject’s speeches, and his insights provide a fresh look at a transformative president that celebrates his accomplishments but never ignores his blunders. A brilliant example of the biographer’s craft, Reagan deftly and boldly provides a balanced portrait of a man whose personality remains elusive but whose legacy continues to resonate."
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Readers will be greatly attracted to Brands' skills as a narrative historian ... [he] delivers high drama in treating Reagan's handling of diplomatic affairs, tensions with the press corps and squabbles with Congress. Few American historians and biographers can compete with Brands as a powerful historical storyteller. Make no mistake, this is a first-rate presidential biography ... The definitive biography of Reagan."
—The Oregonian

"Brands is an immensely talented writer ... [Reagan] is a pleasurable read."
—The Daily Beast

"A keenly researched book, filled with fascinating stories about a young man who escaped Illinois and an alcoholic father to pursue a dream of fame in Hollywood, eventually playing the role of his life as the leader of the free world."
—Tampa Bay Times

"Monumental life of the president whom some worship and some despise—with Brands providing plenty of justification for both reactions ... An exemplary work of history."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A superb biographer writing at the top of his game has found the perfect subject for his narrative skills and profound understanding of the American presidency. Over the years H. W. Brands has produced an extraordinary body of historical and biographical works. This is his masterpiece.”
—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Bully Pulpit

“With characteristic skill and insight, H. W. Brands has painted a compelling portrait of a ubiquitous yet still-misunderstood American. From the Midwest to Hollywood to the pinnacle of power, Reagan was at once enigmatic and effective. Read this great new book to see why.”
—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Thomas Jefferson

"A superb American historian has brought us a fascinating, judicious, original, and concise biography of one of the most important presidents in American history. It is impossible to understand the late twentieth century without understanding Ronald Reagan, and H. W. Brands here addresses an impressive range of the key mysteries of the fortieth president's epoch and life."
—Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage

“Ronald Reagan understood what was best about America, and expected the best for it—which is why he led it so successfully. In Reagan, H. W. Brands expresses, with deep, deft, strokes, what will become the accepted view of a great man.”
—Richard Brookhiser, author of Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln

“No one loved a good story better than Ronald Reagan. His own story—synonymous with the American Century and reflected in his political evolution from New Deal Democrat to Washington-phobic conservative—has never been told better. Studded with fresh insights, empathetic and yet constructively critical, it may well be H. W. Brands’s finest book. Certainly it confirms Reagan’s place as the conservative FDR, a transforming leader whose influence on his country’s politics and governance is arguably greater than the day he left the White House.”
—Richard Norton Smith, author of On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“National treasure H. W. Brands, who gave us the definitive single-volume biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, completes his biographical tour d'horizon of twentieth-century politics with this superb life of Ronald Reagan. In doing so, Brands tracks the paths we wandered through the depression and the Second World War, the battle against communism, and the conservative revolution. How did we get to today’s angry, polarized nation? Read Brands’s life of Reagan, and find out.”
—John A. Farrell, author of Clarence Darrow and Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00NDTS7FU
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor (May 12, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 12, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 20045 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 834 pages

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H.W. Brands taught at Texas A&M University for sixteen years before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. His books include Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Traitor to His Class and The First American were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 23, 2023

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When former lieutenant governor of Texas Barnes said that he had been in the room when certain politicians had encouraged Middle Eastern leaders to hold out for better stuff from Reagan rather than settling with Jimmy Carter, I was shocked. The NYT coverage also mentioned that the historian (one of 4 people Barnes ever told) had put it in a book released in 2015, to no splash at all. I immediately scooped up a copy and went to the relevant section, nicely indexed in the back under Barnes' name.

This is the real deal and a genuine historical document. It's only now, in 2023 with Jimmy Carter in hospice care, that Barnes has stepped forward to shine some sunlight on the machinations going on during that election cycle.

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Clem

Yes, being a great communicator is needed for leadership

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 7, 2015

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Rarely do I every buy new, full-price books. There is such a plethora of great material to be purchased at a discount at so many different types of outlets and I tend to fall into the “frugal” category where reading is concerned. I made an exception for this book, and I’m not really sure why. Whatever the case, I’m very glad I did. This was a wonderfully entertaining book.

It’s always a good sign when you read a book that is almost 800 pages, yet you feel like you wanted so much more upon completion. Books of great length are not that uncommon when written about key figures in history. Example: I just finished a fourth volume of President Lyndon Johnson (the fifth hasn’t been written yet), and the man doesn’t even become president until after about 3,000 pages. So, yes, this book did give the impression of being somewhat succinct.

Fortunately, the parts detailing Reagan’s presidency fill up about 80% of the pages in this account. Having said that, you could make the argument that this book is more of a biography of Reagan the President, as opposed to Reagan the man. If you’re wanting to read about, for example, his career as an actor, his tenure as Governor of California, or his candidacy for President during the seventies, you’re likely to be severely disappointed. The book spends just enough information on these events so we can learn about the character of the man. It’s almost as if the author realizes that before we can appreciate and understand what type of president he was, he needs to give us a little background on some of the key events prior to 1980.

We learn he grew up poor with an alcoholic father, worked scale as a radio baseball announcer, became a very successful B movie actor, was a New Deal Democrat (he voted for FDR four times), was heavily involved in the actors union, was a successful governor, and hated communism. I’ll say it again – he hated communism. We also learned that he truly was a great communicator who loved the stage. Although there are some that dismiss this characteristic as unimportant as a key political figure, I would strongly disagree. Attitude and confidence can go a long way when being a leader, and Ronald Reagan had these attributes when he stepped into the office of president after a post-Watergate, “malaise” infected era of his country’s history.

Even though the majority of this book covers the presidency, there are still several examples where the reader wants more than what they are given. All of the major events are covered, and the biggest ones do get a lot of detailed attention. His greatest success (the Icelandic summit with Gorbachev) and his worst failure (Iran-Contra) get many chapters devoted to both. But some things that were memorable (good and bad) seem to only warrant a paragraph or two at most - such as the James Watt fiasco. I don’t ever remember reading the word “Reaganomics” even once, although there is some information about his efforts to get the economy back on track and changing the tax code.

I was also impressed by the author’s ability to not bog down the reader with governmental jargon. He seems to be aware that most people don’t have a strong understanding of some key events (example: most people, even back in 1983, couldn’t tell you the difference between the Contras and the Sandinistas when discussing Nicaragua). You never feel overwhelmed with information and/or people. He keeps the supporting cast manageable to where the uninformed reader doesn’t have to try to memorize and learn names they’ve never heard (this was a problem I had when I read The Reagan Diaries a few years ago).

We also learn (or are verified with what we already knew) that Reagan wasn’t a particularly good and/or emotional family man. He and wife Nancy adored one and other, but we rarely read about anything when it comes to the Reagan children and what kind of relationship there was. He could be somewhat distant when dealing with emotions, and apparently only let very few into his inner circle of feelings.
All in all most agree that he was a very successful president. Oh, sure, many on the far left hated him, but no Commander in Chief has complete harmony amongst the subjects (See also FDR and JFK). His jingoism could be too much for some, but most would argue that such characteristics were crucial during the time in the country’s history. You also learn that the man truly wanted the best for America and he was never out to hurt anybody. He truly believed that his job was to inspire confidence, encourage all to do their best, and protect the country from outside countries with conflicting ideologies.

Blameless? No. Perfect? Never. Most would argue that despite the drawbacks of some of the major events, the man brought the country back on track. Not everyone will ever fully agree to that statement, but that’s just how life is. Especially in the turbid world of politics.
Wish there could have been another volume or two.

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Paul

A Good Single Volume Biography of Ronald Reagan

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 18, 2015

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This is my first H.W. Brands book and I thought it was good. Some of the reviewers carp at him at not being academic enough, skimpy on the sources, and in general just not intellectually elevated enough to do a serious work. The book is good, and while at over 700 pages, Brand keeps it moving along with pithy chapters contained in seven parts.

The publisher does try to entice the reader with the claim that Reagan is a peer to Franklin Roosevelt, one of the two great presidents of the twentieth century. As Ronnie would say; "there you go again." I suppose we just ignore Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and yes, some of you will cringe when I bring up Richard Nixon, but the publisher is trying to sizzle up this steak and sell books.

I thought Brands was fair in his presentation. After being a two term governor of California in the sixties, the election of Nixon in 1968 took Reagan out of the presidential arena and Reagan very nearly became a footnote of history but Jimmy Carter came along and after four years of a disastrous administration, the election of 1980 was Reagan's chance. Over the years, he had done a good job of keeping himself known,some of it through television, but more so with radio and many people were familiar with his mantra that government was the problem and not the solution. Brands makes a good point when he said that Reagan remembered that FDR won the office in 1932 chiefly because he was not Herbert Hoover. He guessed that he would similarly benefit from not being Jimmy Carter.

Reagan is one of those people that you can make him to be what you want him to be. You can admire him for his communication skills, his conservative values, his love of and belief in America and her people. You can hate him and load up the boat with misgivings. How cruel of him to fire air traffic controllers. cut (or if you prefer, gut) spending to the arts and education. He even allowed his staff to play the old political shell game of proposing a big increase in a military budget, then reducing it as they knew they would be forced to, and calling that a cut. They still do that in Washington.

He was an enigma. He reduced federal spending but increased the deficit by amounts that were huge. While he was seen as the loving family man, they kept his two oldest children out of the view of cameras (the Jane Wyman marriage) because of the fear that the public would perceive him as older. When he went to his adopted son Michael's graduation, Reagan was shaking hands with all the grads and Michael had to tell him that he was his son. Strange indeed. I think the only person he loved was Nancy.

His foreign policy was for me more interesting and when he and Gorbachev met at Reykjavik with a chance to eliminate nuclear weapons, the whole thing fell apart because Reagan clung to SDI (Star Wars) which Gorbachev would accept only as long as laboratory work was done in the next ten years and absolutely no research to be done in space. I wanted to scream. Reagan would not concede this, and while he held firm in his beliefs, I just thought who in the hell is going to know where SDI will be in five years, much less ten? Lie to him if you have to get the deal done. Come home and take your hits of political rage for being "soft" and be done with it, In the end it amounted to nothing. The Democrats stopped funding it after $30 billion had been wasted without results. I also think Reagan took a cheap shot at Gorbachev when he went to Berlin and thrilled the crowd with "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." I suppose he just couldn't resist a shot at his nemesis, but as Brands points out, this was the first Soviet leader that had some political savvy, was capable of smiling and working a crowd and didn't look like he had worked in a vodka factory for the past 60 years.

There is a lot of good information here and I will not attempt to cover it all and I will leave the reader to their own conclusions and as the decades go by, history will also turn enough pages to read its conclusions on Ronald Reagan.

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jason bell

Great book:

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2023

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I read a lot of presidential history. This was the first time I’d read any depth into Reagan. I thought I knew: Iran-Contra, arms for hostages, Brady Bill, Nicaragua, and just say no!

It was my early childhood so it was maybe more nostalgic than I wanted to get. Presidential history should feel more distant. We can’t really judge modern presidents until we start learning some of the “National Security” secrets. I think Reagan comes out looking good, naive and maybe too anti-communist considering the Soviet Union was in rapid decline and he was briefed in detail about the Soviet economic crisis before he ever took office. But Reagan and Gorbachev made an interesting, and productive pair of leaders. Good read.

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Cliente Amazon

Biografia completa e abrangente

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on July 29, 2018

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Sem dúvidas, essa é a mais completa das biografias a respeito de Ronald Reagan que já li. É uma leitura um pouco longa e que, em alguns momentos, pode se tornar cansativa, porém é justamente por isso que esse livro acaba sendo mais abrangente e completo. Esse livro é de grande utilidade tanto para pessoas que já leram previamente outros livros sobre Reagan quanto para aquelas que ainda buscam um primeiro material para entender melhor o quadragésimo presidente dos EUA e o cenário político americano no século passado, sobretudo durante os anos 80.

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Rule 62 Ken

Objective, Intelligent and Thorough

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 25, 2015

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H. W. Brands is nothing if not thorough, and in Reagan: The Life, he brings the same honest professionalism, meticulous research and significant detail in chronicling the life of the 40th President that he did previously in his wonderful biographies of Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts and Ulysses Grant. Brands ably makes the case that Reagan was not what he is often held out to be: an iconic conservative, but rather a pragmatic one. As Reagan once said to his Chief of Staff James Baker, "I'd rather get 80% of what I want, than go over the cliff with my flags flying." Brands makes the case for showing how Reagan's focus on his main goals are what had made his legacy so timeless.

Although the book is a cradle to grave account of Reagan's life, most of its focus is on Reagan's two terms in the White House. There was a lot going on during that time, and Brands recalls and recounts almost all of it with accuracy and a keen analysis. This includes everything from his fiscal policy (dubbed Reaganomics by many), the assassination attempt in March of 1981, the air traffic controllers strike, the invasion of Grenada, Reagan's visit to the Bitburg cemetery, the Challenger tragedy, the shelling of Libya and his Supreme Court appointments. Some aspects of Reagan's administration are given greater focus and scrutiny, most notably nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Iran-Contra affair. Brands' accounting of these chapters in the Reagan Presidency are fascinating. The story of the evolution of the relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev is especially well told. The dynamic between these two leaders of the great powers is extremely interesting.

Brands is neither obsequious nor insolent in his analysis of Reagan's personality and presidency. He given Reagan credit when it is due, and also notes Reagan's failings, weaknesses and management flaws. He addresses Reagan's determination, ambition, timing, luck, and his successes and failures. For example, Brands addresses Reagan's successes in reducing taxes, in restoring public confidence, and in bringing about the diminishing of the influence of communism, as well as his failures in bringing about rapid growth in debt and deficits, his unwillingness to fire those who were deserving of it, and his lack of oversight over rogue subordinates.

Brands ably describes Reagan's declining years in his post presidency, including Reagan's candid declaration of his diagnosis of Alzheimer's and the pitiful decline which the disease brought about in the "Great Communicator". As with all of his historical biographies, Brands is most eloquent in his summary of Reagan's life and legacy and his assessment of Reagan's career, making a strong case as to where prevailing views have it right and where they have it wrong.

Brands' strengths are in his detail (as one might expect from a 737 page tome) and in his objectivity. The book is neither Reagan worship nor Reagan bashing. Brands makes an interesting and compelling case for his opinions on Reagan's life, many of which differ from the standard image many people have of the Gipper. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his conclusions, it is Brands' intelligent and articulate account and assessment of this fascinating life that makes this an excellent work.

Caio C. S. Fernandes

Bom panorama dos anos 80

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on October 29, 2017

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Boa biografia. Demora um pouco até atingirmos o que realmente interessa, a presidência de Reagan, mas ao atingir esse momento o livro dá um bom panorama dos anos 80

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Marc Ranger

A Republican heart, a Democrat soul.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 26, 2015

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Like Reagan used to say, when he was first elected I said to myself (as a 17 years old kid) "Here we go, this conservative hard-liner will bring us to the brink of nuclear war". Thankfully, how wrong was I.

Ronald Reagan had the luck, or the foresight, to experience every side of human nature before he became president. He was a union leader, and then he became a high profile spokeman for a great corporation. He was raised by an alcoholic father in a disfunctional family, but grew to cherish a stable family life with his second wife. More importantly, he truly believe what he though was right, more often than not against all odds.

He had the moral courage to see and say what the Soviet Union was really about, an Evil Empire. Amazingly, that never kept him from trying to
establish personal contact with Soviet Leaders, failing over and over until Gorbatchev came along. He knew when to hold his ground, he knew when to push harder, he knew (with his dealing with both Houses) when to yield when it served the long term greater good. I told you, he was intelligent and astuce enough to see the plus and minus of everything.

He was a great communicator. I still get goosebumps everytime I hear the Berlin speech.

On the down side, he wasn't interested in details, and that cost him a lot of sympathy. Take the Iran-Contra dealings, he wanted the hostages freed, he wanted the contra financed, he didn't care or didn't want to know how.

What I learned reading H.W. Brands books is simple, Ronald Reagan had a Republican heart, and a Democrat soul. That's why he had so few ennemies and that's why he left us an enduring legacy. Bottom line, Ronald Reagan will be regarded as one of the top 3 President of the 20th Century.

JLG

Great biography of a great President

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 27, 2018

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Ronald Reagan will go down in history as one of the greatest U.S. President.

This book is so complete and thoroughthat once you've finished it, you feel as though you knew him personally throughout your life. Excellent read and highly recommended.

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