Review by Choice Review
Ronald Reagan remains a subject of endless fascination. He is generally considered the icon of the Republican Party in much the way that Franklin D. Roosevelt is the icon of the Democratic Party. Brands (Texas), author of biographies of Andrew Jackson (CH, Apr'06, 43-4856), Theodore Roosevelt (CH, May'98, 35-5250), and Franklin D. Roosevelt, now adds this biography of Reagan. Too often, Reagan is seen as a polarizing figure. For some, he was a warmonger who rolled back some of the liberal gains of the 1960s through deregulation and tax cuts; for others, Reagan offered a refreshing change from the stale Carter era. Refreshingly, Brands takes Reagan seriously as a leader and is quick to commend his leadership skills yet offers criticism when warranted. For instance, despite his "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile shield program, Reagan proved flexible when Gorbachev extended an offer of peace. On the other hand, Reagan strapped the country with massive debt and, either through intent or neglect, distanced himself from his own troubles, such as the Iran-Contra Affair, to the point that Brands argues Reagan would have been fired had he been a senior manager of a company. In conclusion, Brands offers another rounded portrait of Reagan, who, in the end, remains a somewhat elusive figure. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --Matthew Scott Hill, Liberty University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
FOR A MAN who lived most of his life on camera, Ronald Reagan eludes focus. There was, and remains, a gauziness to the picture; Reagan retained, throughout his political career, the remoteness of a screen idol, though he never achieved that status as a movie actor. He was ubiquitous for decades and, as president, left a lasting imprint on America's political culture. Yet he was all the same an unknowable man - even to those nearest him. In White House meetings, he was mostly silent, often leaving his aides to guess at (and feud over) his views. In his personal relationships, he was unfailingly warm but rarely intimate. "He doesn't let anybody get too close," one observer said. "There's a wall around him." That the observer was his wife, Nancy, should give pause to any politician or pundit who claims to know what Reagan would do if he were here today. (It should, but it won't.) It should also serve as a warning to any biographer. A two-volume treatment by Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan as a reporter for more than three decades, arguably got close to the real Reagan. But that was a rare achievement. The example of Edmund Morris provides a cautionary tale: In the mid-1980s, having won the Pulitzer Prize, he signed on to write an authorized biography of Reagan and was given extraordinary access to the man and his papers. Yet Morris found his subject so confounding that - in a spectacularly misguided attempt to understand and explain Reagan - he rendered himself a fictional character, worked his way into Reagan's life story and called the resulting book, "Dutch," "an advance in biographical honesty." Once described as "America's Boswell," Morris ended up as Reagan's Ahab - driven mad by his mission to "strike through the mask," as Melville's accursed captain put it. Few authors since have dared reckon with Reagan's life in full. And where biographers fear to tread, monographers run wild and free, publishing shorter takes on narrower topics. The Reagan canon contains books on his spirituality, his character and his dream of a world free of nuclear weapons; books on his successful run for governor of California in 1966, his failed campaign for the Republican nomination in 1976 and his election as president in 1980; and books on his love letters to Nancy and his relationships with Speaker of the House Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Taken together, these books constitute a blind-men-and-the-elephant approach to reconstructing Reagan. Even if one were to read them all, Reagan's own question - a line from one of his films, "King's Row" - would remain: "Where's the rest of me?" The answer might seem likely to be found somewhere in "Reagan: The Life," the first substantial biography of the 40th president in the decade and a half since "Dutch." Undaunted by Morris's misadventure, the historian H.W. Brands does not break a sweat in his brisk, if extended, stroll through Reagan's long life. Brands is at ease in the company of a colossus; in "Reagan," as in his popular biographies of Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and other great men, he breezes through and around complexities without pause or digression. His portrait of Reagan is fair-minded if fond; "Reagan" is free of the partisan ax-grinding and mostly free of the mythmaking that characterizes much of the Reagan bookshelf. Brands makes clear that Reagan was, in many ways, a paradox: an "ideologist" who was open to compromise, even on taxes and federal spending; a reflexive optimist with a wide streak of "negativity"; a staunch anti-Communist whose policies toward the "evil empire" were, as Brands notes, mostly cautious, "pragmatic" and "nonjudgmental." Like his subject, Brands appears happiest when he's telling a story, and Reagan, of course, provides many excellent ones - from his good humor in the emergency room after being shot by John Hinckley in 1981 to his two-day-long negotiation with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, the prelude to a historic arms reduction agreement the following year. Few of these stories, though, are unfamiliar. "Reagan" is a greatest hits collection that is light on new material. Considered against other biographies in its weight class - those mega-books to which the word "definitive" adheres as if by laws of physics - Brands's account is peculiarly unambitious, overfull of pat and timeworn observations. On Reagan's enduring appeal, he writes that "Reagan loved the camera, and the camera loved him. The affair would last a lifetime." On the political power of Reagan's jokes and anecdotes, he notes that "democratic elections are, at their most basic level, popularity contests, and Reagan knew how to be popular." It is counterintuitive to call an 800-page book superficial, but length does not equal depth. Brands, who holds an endowed chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin, shows a surprising indifference to the literature on his subject. Aside from marquee memoirs by Michael Deaver, Donald Regan, George Shultz and other members of the Reagan staff and cabinet, Brands draws on very few books at all, and apparently even fewer primary documents - typically the biographer's manna. This despite the government's rolling declassification of millions of pages of memos, notes and correspondence from the Reagan years. The chapter on Reagan's February 1981 address to Congress, in which he set out his economic agenda, cites only a single source: the text of the speech. An account of Reagan's six-day visit to China in 1984 relies almost exclusively on Reagan's own diary. "THE MOST IMPORTANT source of information on Ronald Reagan," Brands observes in a note on sources, "is Reagan himself." It's true that Reagan, the former actor, did an impressive amount of his own scripting as a politician, writing not only speeches and letters but also policy essays and radio addresses. Reagan's diaries can be refreshingly frank. Brands quotes a June 14, 1982, entry in which Reagan admits to sharing his advisers' irritation with Al Haig, his contentious secretary of state: "It's amazing how sound he can be on complex international matters," Reagan writes, "but how utterly paranoid with regard to the people he must work with." Often, though, Brands simply steps back and allows Reagan - who frequently conflated fact and fiction, and had trouble distinguishing movie plots from reality - to function as his own narrator. At times, Brands casts doubt on Reagan's version of events, but usually he lets Reagan speak for himself, unchecked and unchallenged. "Reagan" is, in the end, a missed opportunity - a disappointingly thin and strangely inert portrait of a president who, given his hold on the conservative imagination, still needs to be better understood. His admirers have worked so assiduously for so long to promote a particular notion of Reagan - the tax-cutting, government-loathing Reagan, the line-in-the-sand Reagan who was unafraid to rattle a saber or call an empire "evil" - that over time it has become harder, not easier, to apprehend the essential Reagan, contradictions and all. The appropriation of Reagan's image by those who reject and deny his political pragmatism requires in response a sharper, clearer, fuller portrait than Brands provides. The rest of Reagan might never be knowable, but the search is important, and ought to go on. 'The most important source of information on Ronald Reagan is Reagan himself.' JEFF SHESOL is the author, most recently, of "Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 7, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
A has-been actor turned GE spokesman, Reagan was tapped by Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign to introduce him during a campaign event. That was Reagan's big break into politics. Three years later, he was elected governor of California. His charm and affability put a friendlier face on conservatism, and his knack for storytelling helped him reduce complex political issues into understandable emotions. Brands recounts Reagan's career in Hollywood, his metamorphosis from liberal to conservative, and his long journey to the presidency. Drawing on interviews with Reagan colleagues, Brands examines Reagan's relationships with alleged handlers, from Nancy Reagan to powerful administration figures Alexander Haig, Ed Meese, and Jim Baker. Like any president, Reagan had his triumphs and stumbles, including the Iran-Contra scandal, but is likely best remembered for his relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his powerful demand to tear down the Berlin Wall. Brand compares Reagan to Roosevelt for his impact on his party's ideals and on American politics. This is a detailed look at a president who sparked much controversy and affection and it belongs in most collections of presidential biography.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This biography by Brands (The Man Who Saved the Union), a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, is a reminder of how difficult it is to construct a clear historical portrait of Ronald Reagan and his wide-ranging career. Reagan remains an extremely polarizing figure; sympathetic authors tend to soften his rough edges, while others willfully ignore his successes or vilify him outright. Brands generally falls in the former camp. He admirably summarizes Reagan's life and times; the writing is clear and the progression of events moves swiftly. Worth noting is how Reagan, "a radio man himself," learned from F.D.R.'s fireside chats. As governor of California, Reagan effectively employed divisive language in dealing with student protesters-"cowardly little bums"-and, as president, successfully wrangled with both Mikhail Gorbachev and the White House press corps. But Brands's apologetic tone can muddy the issues at hand. For instance, when addressing the film industry's blackballing of those who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he writes that "creative work suffered when fear ruled. But the risk was worth taking, for the good of the country." Is this Brands's opinion, or that of his subject? This is a thorough overview, but it adds little to the existing narrative of Reagan. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this dense biography, Pulitzer finalist Brands (The First American) focuses on the life of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), moving chronologically through the diverse phases and careers of the popular yet controversial president. There is rarely much background or context for anyone else around Reagan (such as his wife, Nancy, Richard Nixon, or Barry Goldwater), which is at once a strength and weakness of the work. Readers seeking a broader account may consider Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge, which investigates an era when Reagan transformed from an unknown into a political force through his persuasive communication abilities and shrewd strategy. What Brands's chronicle does better than similar texts is demonstrate the evolution of the man, from the son of an alcoholic to the Great Communicator, by shining light on aspects of Reagan's achievements and personality that prove him to be somewhat awkward (shown in funny, lonely letters to friends while an actor), solitary (demonstrated in ranch sojourns), and mysterious. The author fantastically depicts a man who was alone in a crowd while maintaining a magnetic charisma. Analysis of Reagan's political decisions tends toward the favorable. -VERDICT While the narrative ends with Reagan's death, his decisions and policies continue to be divisive topics among historians, economists, and political analysts. For fans of Reagan as well as readers of American history, biography, presidential history, political science, and communication. [See Prepub Alert, 11/25/14.]-Benjamin Brudner, Curry Coll. Lib., Milton, MA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Monumental life of the president whom some worship and some despisewith Brands (History/Univ. of Texas; The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, 2012, etc.) providing plenty of justification for both reactions. At least some of Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004) perceived greatness, suggests the author, came about as a gift of historical accident. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker "squeezed the inflationary expectations out of the economy and put it on the path to solid growth" in the middle of Jimmy Carter's recession-plagued presidency, just in time for Reagan to harvest the praise when things did turn around. Some came about because the man, though actually distant, expressed a warmth that made people think he cared about them, a good talent for a politico to have. Some came about because, though Reagan had an ideology, he was also a pragmatist who understood that the reason to enter government is to governsomething so many of his followers have forgotten. Brands, a lucid, engaging writer, traces interesting connections between Reagan the politician and Reagan the actor: he was typecast early on as a good guy who played the law-and-order type against more compelling villains, and he learned from Errol Flynn's blacklisting for left-wing views that conservatism was a safer bet. Brands gives Reagan full honors for realism and hard work, as well as a grasp of the need to do sometimes-unpopular things like raising taxes: "American conservativesdisliked taxes but disliked deficits even more." Given the timidity of later politicians to own up to unpleasant facts, there's fresh air in all that, even when it had bad or mixed resultsthe "most sweeping revision of the tax code since World War II," say, or Iran-Contra, which, by Brands' account, was a phase in Reagan's long war against his "ultimate target," Fidel Castro. An exemplary work of history that should bring Reagan a touch more respect in some regards but that removes the halo at the same time. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
