Reagan: His Life and Legend

Max Boot - Reagan: His Life and LegendThis lengthy - and expensive - biography/history, has been well received - and in my mind has reviews and comments better than any of the previous efforts at a biography of Ronald Reagan. He is a complicated figure - and victim of the depression who by determination and luck rose to Hollywood wealth and celebrity status and then found other opportunities as his career faded as Hollywood changed with WWII and the introduction of television in the 1950s.This effort is excellent! The author tries to describe his subject good and not so good; strong and weak; emotional and a softy who could be aloof and cold at the same time. He was a person of contrasts; an ideologue who in office was the pillar of practicality. He seems to have been ambitious young adulthood without aiming at politics; one has the impression he would have as soon been a Hollywood figure and then took his opportunities as circumstances presented them.The study is well written; seems to have been the product of substantial research and original interviews; and does not mince words or descriptions of Reagan - he worked hard at his job; he relied on others as well; he had his strong and weak qualities; he accomplished much.Boot's biography is not my first attempt to understand Reagan and his political importance and legacy through a biography. This is the best I have found

To start this review, this is the second biography of Ronald Reagan I’ve read following H.W. Brands’ book that is shockingly a decade old now. I was excited when Max Boot’s book was scheduled to come out last year and bought it the day it came out on Kindle. The first thing you’re going to see is it’s a very lengthy work (over 1000 pages of text on my Kindle). That is both positive and negative. It gives Boot the chance to significantly discuss the “life and Legend” of Reagan, but it does seem like he spends more time than necessary on Reagan’s pre-presidential years.You’ll learn a lot about Reagan’s upbringing and how he was emotionally distant even as a young person which Boot, like many authors before him, attributed to his being raised by an alcoholic father. Reagan’s inability to emotionally connect with people including his own children is a topic Boot returns to repeatedly through the book. As he gets into Reagan’s adulthood and particularly his change from an FDR Democrat to a Republican one of the interesting contentions is that the change wasn’t do to the influence of Nancy Reagan, but instead because of the reading he did.As Reagan’s political career becomes the focus of the book in California and Washington Boot follows the standard belief that Reagan’s hands off management style was a key aspect. He spends significant time off and on describing the contributions of Reagan’s closest staff and how early staff members in Washington were better at working through issues of the presidency. A consistency of the book are Boot’s references to the way the good or bad advice given by Reagan’s senior advisors impacted his decisions more than other presidents who are engaged in what’s going on.Boot also repeatedly returns to the issue of Reagan’s opposition to civil rights legislation throughout the book. He emphasizes how Reagan used coded language to appeal to white supremacists to get elected and how he often ignored the impact on the African American community of his policies and the income inequality that those policies expanded during and after the Reagan years.There are some parts that Boot doesn’t do as much with as I’d expected. First, he hardly discusses the important nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the supreme court attributing it to Reagan’s 1980 campaign trying to shrink the gender gap. He covers this in less than a handful of pages. Surprisingly, he also only devotes one chapter of about 30 pages to detailing the Iran-Contra Affair which most people today think is the biggest issue of the Reagan presidency.I really enjoyed this book though as I’ve mentioned it might have been a bit shorter (this is the longest book I’ve ever read and that’s saying something as I’ve probably read more than 600 books in my lifetime). I was a little frustrated in with the final pages when he discusses the commonalities and differences between Reagan and Trump. Like many other historians, Boot says that Reagan and Trump both pushed the Republican Party further and further to the right, but no one seems to comment about how the Democrats have moved further to the left.If you’re looking for a single book on Reagan this is certainly the most modern and detailed interpretation available today.

Max Boot achieves what he said he set out to do: write a Reagan biography that is "neither hagiography nor hit job."While giving Reagan deserved credit for restoring a sense of national confidence following a decade of political and economic turmoil and for stimulating dialogue with the Soviet Union which led to significant reductions in tension, he also notes his disengagement from most issues, which made his administration dependent upon the quality of individual subordinates, with avoidable scandals as a result. Analysis of the latter is one of the book's greatest strengths; Boot draws contrasts between competent and incompetent appointees in the same job, e.g., James Baker vs. Don Regan as Chief of Staff, or George Shultz vs. Alexander Haig as Secretary of State. Unlike some Reagan hagiographers, Boot gives full credit to Mikhail Gorbachev as the person who, more than any other, dismantled the Soviet Union.This book is also valuable, in our current hyperpartisan environment, in pointing out multiple examples of Reagan's pragmatism, both as Governor of California and President, reflected in his willingness to compromise on issues, especially taxation, and his disinclination to become highly engaged on "social issues" on which the nation was deeply divided.Boot also explores the main paradox of Reagan's personality: great courtesy in his treatment of individuals and sympathy for their problems combined with indifference to groups of people afflicted with the same concerns, as well as aloofness toward his children.This book gives the reader a full sense of who Reagan was and what he did, his triumphs and his shortcomings. You can't ask much more of a biography.

Very well written. Like a review I read, Max Boot “doesn’t pull any punches”. He did a tremendous job at research. I lived through the Reagan years but I wanted to know more about certain events, such as the Iran Contra scandal. It’s over 700 pages and worth it. Enjoy!!

Liberal point of view. Not impartial at all. I regret purchasing this book. Leaves out a lot details about Reagan. Disappointed.