Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot
English | 2024 | Biography & Memoir
“Reagan: His Life and Legend aims to be the definitive biography, and it succeeds. It’s a thoughtful, absorbing account. It’s also a surprising one.” ―Daniel Immerwahr, New Yorker
Named one of the “Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall” by NPR and the New York Times
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.
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 re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor.
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