The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008
by Sean Wilentz

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008
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Book Summary Information

Author: Sean Wilentz
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN: 0060744804
Number of pages: 576
Publisher: Harper

Book Reviews of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

Book Review: A seriously biased look at the the Conservative movement
Summary: 1 Stars

I first must state that I consider myself a political moderate. The author freely admits he is a partisan Democrat who helped Albert Gore in Florida in 2000. While Wilentz insists he can be balanced in his writing the truth is this is a seriously biased piece of work. Almost everything done by Republican leaders the past thirty-four years is portrayed negatively. The phrase "damning with faint praise" also frequently comes to mind when reading this book. Conservatives will hate this book while moderates like myself will find it so biased as to be totally lacking in credibility, but I'm sure liberals will love it. Be forewarned this isn't close to being an objective book.

Summary of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

One of the nation's leading historians offers a groundbreaking and provocative chronicle of America's political history since the fall of Nixon.

The past thirty-five years have marked an era of conservatism. Although briefly interrupted in the late 1970s and temporarily reversed in the 1990s, a powerful surge from the right has dominated American politics and government. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz accounts for how a conservative movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it, and the momentous consequences that followed.

Ronald Reagan has been the single most important political figure of this age. Without Reagan, the conservative movement would have never been as successful as it was. In his political persona as well as his policies, Reagan embodied a new fusion of deeply right-leaning politics with some of the rhetoric and even a bit of the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. In American political history there have been a few leading figures who, for better or worse, have placed their political stamp indelibly on their times. They include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt-and Ronald Reagan. A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan has been so admired by a minority of historians and so disliked by the others that it has been difficult to evaluate his administration with detachment. Drawing on numerous primary documents that have been neglected or only recently released to the public, as well as on emerging historical work, Wilentz offers invaluable revelations about conservatism's ascendancy and the era in which Reagan was the preeminent political figure.

Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of Reagan raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about our nation's recent past.

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