Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980

I was so looking forward to Reaganland, and much of what I have read is interesting having lived through many of the events as a teenager. Loved his first three books, and on that basis bought this.

Reading this latest work, I get the impression the author was under pressure from the publisher to get another book out the door! Dont know how much of the responsibility rests with the publisher and the author, but clearly the publisher did not care enough to have a copy editor review the book.

On page after page there are errors, both factual and typographical. Some are picayune (its the Congressional Research Service, not the Congressional Service; Senator Howard Cannon was from Nevada not Utah), but there are so many! On nearly every page there are verbs, conjunctions or other sentence components missing. There are so many errors, it distracts from the reading experience.

Inexcusable from a major publisher like Simon & Schuster.

Reaganland looks daunting for the bibliochallanged, but it reads fast and well. Unlike some historical tomes, this one had me laughing and crying as I relived my youth through Pearlstein’s lens. I was 17 in the bicentennial year of 1976 and 22 when Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. I was also politically active and an early volunteer for Jimmy Carter. Almost every page of Reaganland seemed vivid for me as it brought back memories of the times. Of course, some memories are best forgotten. Reaganland brought it all back, the political genius of Ronald Reagan and his wide cast of handlers. It also evokes the fundamental decency of Jimmy Carter as he tries to balance politics and governing amidst an energy and economic crisis. Perlstein doesn’t blame everything on Reagan and Carter, this is also a story of how the media went from Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid to Ted Koppel and Howard Beale. Nobody is better at weaving politics with popular culture and its discontents than Rick Perlstein.

This is not a book about two politicians. It is about the culture war that still defines our time. Nor is Reaganland a biography of Ronald Reagan. It is the story, the definitive story, of how and why Reagan became President and the defining political figure of the era. It is also about the birth of what we now know as neoconservatism. If you have to read one book about the 1970’s or Presidents Carter and Reagan, this is it.

To understand how we got from Camelot (Kennedy) to Trump, you can’t just read one book. But certainly the four Rick Perlstein books give a great start. My perfect bookshelf starts with those four and then add two by Isabel Wilkerson (isn’t Cast brilliant???), Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow, Daniel Okrent’s Guarded Gate, and then any number of the books that show how much trouble RED America is now in (my favorites: Strangers in Their Own Land, Dreamland, Dopesick, and Tightrope). Why cite all of them? I personally think that if you read Rick Perlstein FIRST, then you will have the right context as you start picking up each of the others. His work is that timeless — and that important.

Rick Perlstein in Reaganland takes the reader through the presidency of Jimmy Carter and the concurrent rise of Ronald Reagan and the effect his rise had on American conservatism. Perlstein goes way beyond the basic narrative that Jimmy Carter was so awful that American voters turned to Ronald Reagan. But explains how the Carter presidency offered an opening to conservatives to take the White House. The two stories take place concurrently. Reagan himself was not a shoe in as the 1980 Republican field boasted several more conventional choices such as George H.W. Bush, John Connelly, and several other lesser figures.

Perlstein is painstakingly detailed and more than a little bit snarky as he takes readers inside the unorthodox, sometimes bumbling presidency of Jimmy Carter, the infighting in the ultimately successful Reagan campaign, the campaigns of the other contenders, and of personal interest to me the campaign of Rockford IL. Congressman John Anderson who serves as a contrast of both Carter and Reagan and something of a relic of a passing era even in 1980.

The thing Perlstein really excels at is not just giving the politics of this time period but a look at what was going on in the country so that the reader who may not have been alive during the time period can understand the how and why the American public may have felt and reacted to the events by turning to Reagan, which is the central focus of the book.

Reaganland is a worthy continuation of Perlsteins work on the evolution of American Conservatism that is both informative and entertaining.

Another homerun by Rick Perlstein. The author has an uncanny ability to insert appropriate quotes in the right place at the right time. This ability, along with superb writing skills makes this entertaining book a pleasure to read. If you love president Reagan [as i do] you’ll enjoy this book. Guaranteed. If you dislike president Reagan, you will still find this book instructive. The book recounts in detail the horrible mistakes/ gaffes president Carter made. It’s been said the 60s did not end until at least the mid-seventies or even later. President Reagan realized the 60s party was over, and that the American people had had enough. Mr Perlstein’s earlier books on Nixon and in addition, Reagan, are also about the 60s counter-culture wars. Forgive me for sounding corny but i was there. It’s fun to read a good book about contemporary times when one lived and saw it all. Also improved my vocabulary and looked up funereal, calumniate, unspooling, caterwauling, folie a deux, tintinnabulation, cloture, regnant yuletide, cadging, janissary, amicus, habitues and lathe. America was soooooooo divided back then! And Mr Perlstein illustrates this with various anecdotes marvelously. Is the US even more divided now? I’ll allow Rick Perlstein to answer that in his next book.

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