Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot – Reads like a 1,300 page indictment

When I saw that Max Boot had written Reagan: His Life and Legend, I was excited to read this biography. Reagan is a leader I had come admire over the years. This book has a lot of favorable reviews, so I had high expectations.

Sadly, this biography on Ronald Reagan was a disappointment. Max Boot did a tremendous amount of research about the former President. But the book that he wrote is more like 1,300-page indictment against Reagan. His bias comes through on every page. Boot seems to think Ronald Reagan is the equivalent of a simpleton, like the character Chauncey Gardiner. I found the author to be hyper-critical and negative of Reagan as a person and as a leader. This book was very wearisome to read. For the above reasons, I do not recommend this book.

I would like to thank the publisher Liveright and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an electronic copy of Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot. I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician—America’s fortieth president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography. Reagan!!! Enjoy it so much.

Sweeping, well-researched biography of Reagan that gets closer than many have done to understanding a man who was an enigma and still proves to be elusive to biographers.

"Reagan: His Life and Legend" by Max Boot is a nuanced look at the life of “the Great Communicator,” as the president was often called. Although Reagan died twenty years ago and has been the subject of numerous biographies, Boot’s perspective, coming as it does with the knowledge of the hard-right, populist turn American conservatism took under Donald Trump, offers a fresh perspective. The reader should be aware that the current biopic playing in theaters and also called Reagan is not based on this book.

For those unfamiliar with Reagan’s early life as I was, this biography reveals the family dynamics that shaped young “Dutch” Reagan, born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, to a deeply religious mother and an erratic, alcoholic father who struggled to stay employed. Nearsighted, introverted Dutch may have seemed an unlikely future Hollywood star, but he inherited from his mother a fondness for dramatic reading, which, in the heyday of the burgeoning film industry meant aspirations toward an acting career.

His acting experience stood Reagan in good stead as he developed the skills that would give him yet another nickname, “The Great Communicator.” He was an avid reader and writer, capable of composing his own speeches for many years. Pragmatic and willing to leave the details to others, he had a habit as president of delegating out policies and programs to staff, something that would cause him political difficulties in situations like the Iran-Contra affair in which the US secretly traded arms for hostage releases.

Some of the most fascinating parts of the book were about his family life. His relationships with his children were generally distant, though the youngest son, Ron Reagan, Jr., was closest to his parents and their favorite, despite political differences. Nancy was fiercely protective of her husband, and the assassination attempt early in his presidency horrified her.

The picture that emerges of Ronald Reagan is of a simple man who left a complicated legacy. His determination to dominate the Soviet Union was successful, though his dedication to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) came close to derailing it, even though the space-based system never really came to fruition. At the same time, his refusal to embrace efforts to curb the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s disappointed many. (George W. Bush, in contrast, would receive acclaim for backing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.”

The most poignant part of the book was when Nancy had to share his Alzheimer’s diagnosis with him. He knew all too well what it meant and insisted on penning a handwritten letter to the American people to share the news with them while he still could express himself in his own words.

Boot, who was born in Moscow and immigrated with his family to the US in 1976 at the age of seven, is a military historian and columnist with the Washington Post, specializing in foreign affairs. A conservative who left the Republican Party in 2016, he grew up in the Reagan years and offers a balanced account of the life of one the most memorable presidents of the last half century.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

An in depth look at the life of a truly amazing man. This book pulls you in and gives you genuine insight into Mr. Reagan. The world is better because of him.

I voluntarily read an advanced copy.

Thanks to Liveright and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

If you want to know why American society is the way it is today, it begins with the Reagan Revolution. The first in-depth biography of the 40th President of the United States since 2015, this book does a good job of showing how Reagan began his finely-honed B.S. machine, starting when he was under contract to Warner Brothers. Anyone that is anyone that has followed the history of Hollywood and the studio system knows how they created fictions for their more popular performers, glossing over indiscretions in a star’s life. Reagan really leaned into this and started to believe his own press and the stories he fabricated.

When Reagan began his political career, he used a series of stump speeches, where he told the same old tall tales that mentioned statistics or “facts” that would be shown to be down-right falsehoods. As his son, Ron, would mention in a 2020 CNN documentary, he would be hit with incontrovertible facts and would push back, saying, “All I know is…” and refused to listen to people once his mind was made up. The press at the time just thought he was such a likeable guy that they let all this stuff slide, just as they would for countless politicians, from FDR to JFK.

Flash forward past Reagan’s 8 years as governor of California and his run for the presidency. After coming so close to taking the nomination away from Gerald Ford in 1976, he ran again in 1980. By now, post-Watergate world, the press didn’t play along as well as they used to. Reagan would spew “facts” and tales that when fact-checked, showed he was full of falsehoods. Some brave reporters called him out on it, but in general, the population didn’t care, because Reagan seemed like such a “nice guy.” His slogan was “Make America Great Again.”

Reagan’s policies and performances from his two terms in office are still being felt by U.S. citizens today. “Reaganomics” turned out to be an utter failure and was the beginning of the long, slow attack on the middle class, making the wealthy even wealthier, and putting the tax burden on the average voter. The deregulations of TV and radio stations opened up the door for Rupert Murdoch in the United States and the creation of the Fox network and led to the rise of a slew of conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, who also played fast and loose with facts. That led to Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and on and on.

This book does a great job of exploring Reagan’s life in great detail, and it shows exactly how the “Moral Majority” ended up taking over the Republican Party by following Reagan’s lead, who talked a great deal about having great faith, but rarely went to church, and in his quest for smaller government, hurt instead of helped people, in a very un-Christian way. Modern Republican politicians invoke the legacy of Reagan and now embrace a man who doesn’t live like a Christian in any way. At the end of the book, as one would suspect, the author compares and contrasts the similarities and differences between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. There are some differences, but the similarities are stunning.

I debated if I wanted to read this book or not, but decided to request it, and I am so glad I did.
The author, Max Boot, said he was an Independent, and as I read the book, he was. He told the Reagan story, through facts, about Ronald Reagan, the man, the history, and it just flowed, making reading such a delightful experience. If we could only have history books like this in school. There was a lot of history being made at that time.
I received an ARC from Liveright through NetGalley.

My husbands grandma passed this year and she had a signature from Reagan and it was so fun to read this book with my husband! The information was phenomenal and it was so well put together. I loved the layout and the way it held the reader in. Wonderfully done! I majored in history in college, and this book should be added to the college courses. Such great information!