Reagan

His Life and Legend 

Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician—America’s fortieth president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography.

Book
Foreign policy analyses written by CFR fellows and published by the trade presses, academic presses, or the Council on Foreign Relations Press.

Amazon Best Book of September 2024 

New York Times Nonfiction Book to Read Fall 2024

New York Times Ten Best Books of 2024

New Yorker Essential Reads of 2024

More on:

United States

Presidential History

Politics and Government

In this “monumental and impressive” biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president’s aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides “the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date” (Robert Mann).

The 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 Clyde Wilson, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer, and Jack Reagan, a struggling, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a handsome young man, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard, whose early successes mirrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan’s life against American history, Boot recreates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor.

The world of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant, not only in Reagan’s coming-of-age in such classics as Knute Rockne and Kings Row but during the twilight of his film career, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of General Electric Theater, which established his bona fides as one of the leading conservative voices of the time. Indeed, the leap to California governor in 1966 seemed almost preordained, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift.

Reagan’s 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist 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 America’s spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan’s opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.

With its revelatory insights, Reagan: His Life and Legend is no apologia, depicting a man with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of “trickle-down economics,” the Cold War’s end, the Iran-Contra affair, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan’s family, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.

More on:

United States

Presidential History

Politics and Government

Reviews and Endorsements

A timely and fascinating book, just what we need to understand, and perhaps transcend, our current age of political paralysis and polarization.

Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs

An exceptional biography of an exceptional man! This is the definitive Reagan biography that so many of us have been waiting for.

General David Petraeus, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Boot’s biography is essential to understanding the roots of Trumpism and is a briskly written portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic and influential presidents.

Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down and Guests of the Ayatollah

Max Boot’s Reagan biography is superb—in my judgment, definitive…. It really is an art to weave so much research and knowledge into an absorbing narrative which never flags. 

Richard North Patterson, #1 New York Times best-selling author

Max Boot beautifully catches the essence of who [Reagan] was.

Stuart K. Spencer, Ronald Reagan’s political consultant, 1966–84

In the Press

Did Ronald Reagan Pave the Way for Donald Trump? 

Courtesy of the New York Times

What If Ronald Reagan’s Presidency Never Really Ended?

Courtesy of the New Yorker

Understanding the Republican Party’s Rightward March

Courtesy of the Economist 

Top Stories on CFR

South Korea

Yoon Suk-Yeol’s shocking declaration of ‘emergency martial law’ was a frontal assault on the integrity of South Korea’s hard-won democratic system.

Lebanon

An array of domestic and foreign powers are vying for influence in Lebanon, including the Lebanese Armed Forces, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, Syria, and the United States.

China

China’s growing willingness to defy the international order, and its increasingly aggressive leadership, have led it to increasingly utilize economic coercion against countries it believes have defied China’s interests. This coercion can be powerful, and the United States and its partners have not been well-prepared for Beijing’s actions. The U.S. and others need to develop a response immediately.