Challenges popular conceptions about the 40th president's administration and legacy, arguing that subsequent presidents and conservative policymakers have exploited the country's misunderstandings of Reagan's achievements to promote risky agendas. Reprint.

New York Times Bestseller: A “remarkable and evenhanded study of Ronald Reagan” from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg (The New York Times). Updated with a new preface by the author, this captivating biography of America’s fortieth president recounts Ronald Reagan’s life—from his poverty-stricken Illinois childhood to his acting career to his California governorship to his role as commander in chief—and examines the powerful myths surrounding him, many of which he created himself. Praised by some for his sunny optimism and old-fashioned rugged individualism, derided by others for being a politician out of touch with reality, Reagan was both a popular and polarizing figure in the 1980s United States, and continues to fascinate us as a symbol. In Reagan’s America, Garry Wills reveals the realities behind Reagan’s own descriptions of his idyllic boyhood, as well as the story behind his leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, the role religion played in his thinking, and the facts of his military service. With a wide-ranging and balanced assessment of both the personal and political life of this outsize American icon, the author of such acclaimed works as What Jesus Meant and The Kennedy Imprisonment “elegantly dissects the first U.S. President to come out of Hollywood’s dream factory [in] a fascinating biography whose impact is enhanced by techniques of psychological profile and social history” (Los Angeles Times).

This book is the first full-length study into the Reagan presidency with the tools of narratology. It expands the understudied field of research into political narratives as concrete policy tools and provides a new means of understanding the continuing popularity of Reagan as a President.

Although he left office, Ronald Reagan remains a potent symbol for the conservative movement. This work presents the study of the interplay of politics and memory concerning our fortieth president. It scrutinizes key aspects of the Reagan legacy and the conservative mythology that surrounds it.

Analyzes President Reagan's speeches to show how he alters facts, changes history into allegory, and uses metaphors and anecdotes to influence his listeners

In politics, the man who takes the highest spot after a landslide is not standing on solid ground. In this riveting work of narrative nonfiction, Jonathan Darman tells the story of two giants of American politics, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, and shows how, from 1963 to 1966, these two men—the same age, and driven by the same heroic ambitions—changed American politics forever. The liberal and the conservative. The deal-making arm twister and the cool communicator. The Texas rancher and the Hollywood star. Opposites in politics and style, Johnson and Reagan shared a defining impulse: to set forth a grand story of America, a story in which he could be the hero. In the tumultuous days after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson and Reagan each, in turn, seized the chance to offer the country a new vision for the future. Bringing to life their vivid personalities and the anxious mood of America in a radically transformative time, Darman shows how, in promising the impossible, Johnson and Reagan jointly dismantled the long American tradition of consensus politics and ushered in a new era of fracture. History comes to life in Darman’s vivid, fly-on-the wall storytelling. Even as Johnson publicly revels in his triumphs, we see him grow obsessed with dark forces he believes are out to destroy him, while his wife, Lady Bird, urges her husband to put aside his paranoia and see the world as it really is. And as the war in Vietnam threatens to overtake his presidency, we witness Johnson desperately struggling to compensate with ever more extravagant promises for his Great Society. On the other side of the country, Ronald Reagan, a fading actor years removed from his Hollywood glory, gradually turns toward a new career in California politics. We watch him delivering speeches to crowds who are desperate for a new leader. And we see him wielding his well-honed instinct for timing, waiting for Johnson’s majestic promises to prove empty before he steps back into the spotlight, on his long journey toward the presidency. From Johnson’s election in 1964, the greatest popular-vote landslide in American history, to the pivotal 1966 midterms, when Reagan burst forth onto the national stage, Landslide brings alive a country transformed—by riots, protests, the rise of television, the shattering of consensus—and the two towering personalities whose choices in those moments would reverberate through the country for decades to come. Praise for Landslide “Richly detailed . . . Landslide is a vivid retelling of a tumultuous three years in American history, and Mr. Darman captures in full the personalities and motives of two of the twentieth century’s most consequential politicians.”—The New York Times “Novel and even surprising . . . Landslide deftly reminds readers that Johnson and Reagan both trafficked in grandiose oratory and promoted utopian visions at odds with the social complexity of modern America.”—The Washington Post “Riveting . . . Darman portrays [Johnson and Reagan] as polar opposites of political attraction. . . . Animated by the artful insight that they were men of disappointment headed toward an appointment with history . . . A tale about myths and a nation that believed them, about a world of a half century ago now gone forever.”—The Boston Globe “Alert to the subtleties of politics and political history, Darman, a former correspondent for Newsweek, nimbly explores delusion and self-delusion at the highest levels.”—The New York Times Book Review

Robert Collins examines the critical and controversial developments of the 1980s and the unmistakable influence of Ronald Reagan on their making. Portraying the former president as a complex political figure who combined ideological conservatism with political pragmatism, Collins demonstrates how Reagan's policies helped limit the scope of government, control inflation, reduce the threat of nuclear war, and defeat communism. In the 1980s other changes occurred as well, including the advent of the personal computer, a revolution in information technology, a more globalized national economy, and a restructuring of the American corporation. In the realm of culture, MTV, self-help gurus, and postmodernism realized the cultural shifts of the postwar era, creating a conflict that pitted cultural conservatism against a secular, multicultural view of the world. Entertaining and erudite, Transforming America explores the events, movements, and ideas that profoundly changed American culture and politics during an important decade.

“Farber [is] a lucid and courageous witness to the power-play behind the first ‘scamdemic,’ . . . [Her] work is journalism at its best—solid, lucid, and humane, attacking wrongs that few dare touch, and thereby helping right them.” —Mark Crispin Miller, bestselling author and professor of media studies at NYU On April 23, 1984, in a packed press conference room in Washington, DC, the secretary of health and human services declared, “The probable cause of AIDS has been found.” By the next day, “probable” had fallen away, and the novel retrovirus later named HIV became forever lodged in global consciousness as “the AIDS virus.” Celia Farber, then an intrepid young reporter for SPIN magazine, was the only journalist to question the official narrative and dig into the science of AIDS. She reported on the “evidence” that was being continually cited and repeated by health officials and the press, the deadliness of AZT, and Dr. Fauci’s trials on children, infants, and pregnant mothers. Throughout, Faber’s reportage was largely ignored. She was maligned, maliciously attacked, and ultimately canceled. Now, forty years after her original reporting, Farber’s Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS is reissued with a new foreword by Mark Crispin Miller, shining much-needed light on her groundbreaking work once again. More relevant than ever, this book serves as an essential foundation to understanding its catastrophic sequel: COVID-19. Serious Adverse Events makes clear that the tactics employed at the height of HIV/AIDS—the fearmongering, cancel culture, and “woke” takeover of science, medicine, and journalism—persist today. The response to COVID-19 isn’t new: it is a well-trod and dangerous path in the social landscape. “Groundbreaking work.”—Bob Guccione, Jr., founder of SPIN magazine "Farber’s research give context to the Covid catastrophe which she all but predicted. Despite the medical cartel’s brutal crusade to silence and vilify her, Farber never compromised. . . I’m happy she has lived to experience her own utter vindication. I also love her writing style."—Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The most important speeches of America's "Great Communicator": Here, in his own words, is the record of Ronald Reagan's remarkable political career and historic eight-year presidency.

Among the stirring, illogical episodes described here: a band of desperate religious refugees find themselves blown hopelessly off course, only to be deposited at the one spot on a wild continent best suited for their survival; George Washington's beaten army, surrounded by a ruthless foe and on the verge of annihilation, manages an impossible escape due to a freakish change in the weather; a famous conqueror known for seizing territory, frustrated by a slave rebellion and a frozen harbor, impulsively hands Thomas Jefferson a tract of land that doubles the size of the United States; a weary soldier picks up three cigars left behind in an open field and notices the stogies have been wrapped in a handwritten description of the enemy's secret battle plans--a revelation that gives Lincoln the supernatural sign he's awaited in order to free the slaves.