President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination

Using the techniques he employed in his highly original bestselling books on Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, concentrating on the goals each president set for himself, Reeves takes us inside Reagan's Oval Office to show us this president moving easily into his role, finding the words and acts to move his very focused agenda: regain military superiority, roll back taxes, diminish the government, restore American pride and destroy communism. Reagan imagined a different world and had the right words, the personal optimism and unshakable will to make it happen. At home he drove enduring wedges into the body politic by turning political questions into moral issues. Abroad he waged unconstitutional covert wars. The Ronald Reagan we see is a charismatic, crafty, often deceptive politician. He expanded the power of an office believed to be in decline. Arguments about what he did with that power endure. The way Reagan did it - because he changed the presidency itself, and perhaps the world - will long be studied. Astonishing in its intimacy, authoritative in its sourcing, "President Reagan" is a portrait of modern presidential power that will stand as the definitive study of Reagan in the White House.