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Title: Reagan's America by Garry Wills ISBN: 0-14-029607-7 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Best authority on Reagan's early life
Comment: COvering much of the same ground as Edmund Morris in his authorized biography, "Dutch," Garry Wills' "Reagan's America: Innocents at Home" is a much more successful look at the institutions and country that shaped the 40th President.
With his usual incisive analysis and beautiful use of the English language, Wills does what Morris found impossible: the discovery of Reagan's soul.
To Wills, Reagan is the logical product of the American heartland and of the institutions of the heartland: community service (he was a lifeguard first), small town media (he was a Des Moines, IA, radio announcer). Reagan is also shaped by the institutions of coastal America that are marketed to the heartland: movies and big business (when Reagan made the final turn toward conservatism, he was the national spokesman for General Electric). Finally, Reagan is also the product of a dysfunctional family, with some of the same logical results: a withholding from others, a love of the abstract and of fantasy.
At the end of Wills' study, the reader gains a clear impression of the forces that created Ronald Reagan and bonded him to the American people. It is true that Reagan, as Morris argues, is enigmatic. But he is not impossible to begin to understand. Wills is the essential guide to the Reagan who was fully formed long before he reached the White House.
Rating: 5
Summary: dead on
Comment: Wills captures both the man and the eras he inhabited in prose that sometimes approaches poetry. There are fascinating historical tidbits, insights a-plenty, funny jokes ("war movies are hell"), and some breathtaking chapter finales. This guy can write.
And he can indict. Wills stalks Reagan (and his real subject, Reagan's America) through each stage of his life, exposing the guilt under the glitter. Wills is a consumate hanging judge here, as in his other treatises on presidents Kennedy and Nixon.
Don't be fooled, however -- it's not Reagan he's hanging.
Rating: 4
Summary: A very even handed book. Honest and thought provoking.
Comment: I consider myself a conservative, and I found this book very helpful in understanding my conservative "roots." A warts and all look at a man misunderstood by both sides. Conservatives with an open mind take note, 2 of the 3 negative reviews here are from people who think the LA Times is a socialist paper (read: anything not right wing is socialist), and to not like Reagan is to be against tax cuts.
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Title: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man by Garry Wills ISBN: 0618134328 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 14 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Explaining America: The Federalist by Garry Wills, Garry Willis ISBN: 0140298398 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills ISBN: 0618134433 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 14 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: JOHN WAYNES AMERICA by Garry Wills ISBN: 0684838834 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 02 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Indepedence by Garry Wills ISBN: 0618257764 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 14 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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