From best-selling biographer Max Boot comes this revelatory portrait, a decade in the making, of Ronald Reagan, the actor-turned-politician whose telegenic leadership ushered in a transformative conservative era in American politics. Despite his fame as a Hollywood star and television host, Reagan remained an enigma-a man of profound contradictions-even to those closest to him. Believing that this inscrutability contributed to Reagan's appeal, Max Boot sought to reveal the real man behind the mythology. Drawing on more than a hundred new interviews and thousands of newly available documents, Reagan tells the epic story of the Depression-era poor boy who transfixed and transformed the nation. Yet Boot, a one-time Republican policy advisor, offers no apologia, depicting a man with a Manichean, good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing. Providing revelatory insights into "trickle-down economics", the Cold War's end, the Iran-Contra affair and so much more, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.

About the Author
Max Boot, historian and foreign-policy analyst, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the Washington Post. His New York Times bestseller The Road Not Taken was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Reviews
"[I]mpeccably researched and thoroughly compelling... thanks to Boot's enormously readable and scrupulously honest book, we know more than ever before about this complicated, frustrating and yet oddly magnetic man." -- Dominic Sandbrook - The Sunday Times
"This biography is a doggedly researched, deeply readable character study, set in a bygone era of politics. " -- The Economist
"[A] generous yet sharply perceptive biography" -- Peter Conrad - The Observer
"[A] readable and insightful biography" -- Philip Johnston - The Telegraph
"[Reagan's] remoteness has frustrated biographers... Max Boot, a historian who advised Republican presidential candidates but broke with his party over Mr Trump, has triumphed over predecessors. He marshals a huge amount of research to provide a full account of Reagan's life, from his boyhood in Illinois to his decline into Alzheimer's." -- The Economist
"This is a timely and fascinating book, just what we need to understand, and perhaps transcend, our current age of political paralysis and polarization. Understanding Reagan is key to understanding our politics today." -- Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs
"This comprehensive biography-relying on a decade of research, unearthed records, and revealing interviews-separates man from myth, offering a compelling and clear-eyed portrait of this consequential president and the country he shaped." -- Karen Tumulty, author of The Triumph of Nancy Reagan
"a new and masterly biography of Ronald Reagan" -- William Hague - The Times
"[Reagan] aims to be the definitive biography, and it succeeds. It's a thoughtful, absorbing account." -- Daniel Immerwahr - The New Yorker
"A judicious biography. " -- Jacob Heilbrunn - The New York Times
"[Boot] is a thorough biographer... He recognises the fundamental tension in Reagan (and in his administration) between pragmatism and moralism." -- Jackson Lears - London Review of Books
"Intelligent, elegant and engrossing" -- Andrew Preston - Literary Review
"[A] magisterial new biography... The first important Reagan biography of the post-Reagan era" -- Geoffrey Kabaservice - The Washington Post
"Reagan is the best, most balanced biography to date of the man and his era... [A] fine book" -- Fredrik Logevall - The Times Literary Supplement
"[A] remarkable book... One of the particular reasons the book is so welcome is it really is the first comprehensive and fair biography of Reagan we've had. There have been hagiographies in the past, and hatchet jobs, but Max Boot looks with a clear eye at both the triumphs and the failures." -- Mark Smith - The Herald


Awards
Long-listed for National Book Critics Circle Award 2024.



Book Information
ISBN 9780871409447
Author Max Boot
Format Hardback
Page Count 880
Imprint Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 1227g
Dimensions(mm) 244mm * 163mm * 46mm