Understanding Ronald Reagan Is Key to Understanding America, Writes Max Boot in New Book

“It is no exaggeration to say that you cannot fully comprehend what happened to America in the twentieth century without first understanding what happened to Ronald Reagan,” argues Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in his new biography Reagan: His Life and Legacy. “To know how we got here—to the America and the world of the twenty-first century—you must chart his lengthy, eventful, and consequential life, a life whose course was often at odds with the legend that has grown around him.”

Reagan served as the fortieth president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Boot’s detailed account of Reagan’s life spans his beginnings in the American Midwest, pursuit of movie stardom in Hollywood, historic political career, and life after the presidency.

Using newly available resources, as well as perspectives from Reagan’s family members, friends, and colleagues, Boot paints a complex portrait of the well-known but enigmatic former president. “Reagan was often accused of having simplistic views, but he was hardly a simple man,” Boot asserts.

Boot’s comprehensive narrative gives insight into Reagan’s presidency through intimate portrayals of the former president, his partnership with his wife, Nancy Reagan, and relationships with key staffers.
As Boot states in the book’s introduction, he set out to create “. . . a fair-minded account of a pragmatic but flawed president whose soaring vision made his presidency a success but whose inability to manage the government and aversion to uncomfortable realities inflicted heavy costs on his administration and the country as a whole.”

Through analyzing Reagan’s legacy from the perspective of contemporary times, Boot observes the contrast between Reagan and the party that he once represented. “Some of Reagan’s passions—for cutting taxes and appointing conservative judges—continue to animate the modern Republican Party, but his support for immigration, free trade, and alliances are as much a quaint relic of the past as his gentlemanly demeanor, willingness to compromise, and reluctance to attack opponents by name."

“Ronald Reagan became the most unifying figure—indeed, arguably, the only unifying figure—in the Republican Party and the conservative movement,” Boot writes of Reagan’s legacy.

Boot—a historian, best-selling author, foreign policy analyst, and a weekly columnist for the Washington Post—provides a meticulous account of this consequential figure and his considerable and lasting influence on American politics.

Read more about Reagan: His Life and Legend and order your copy at https://www.cfr.org/book/reagan.

To request an interview with the author, please contact CFR Communications at [email protected].