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Product Description: 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. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-05
Excellent Book
It's what you expect! The negative reviews of this book comes from those with a mythical opinion of Reagan. In the introduction the author states that the book is different from the current selection of books on the Reagan Era, which either elevates Reagan to God status or treats him as the Devil. The book is meant to explore WHY the age of Reagan occured. If you want the regular old deification, there are plenty of books which do that. If you are looking for a book which looks at primary sources (the Holy Grail for Historians), then this is your book. Buy it and enjoy, it is excellent. Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-26
Nausea inducing
I managed to get through about 20 pages before I couldn't take any more. Willentz is just another Ivy League lib with no pretence to objectivity.
It's just so predictable.
Rating:
Date: 2008-06-21
liberal garbage
Liberal Garbage
I bought this expecting a balanced account of the ups and downs of Conservatism from Nixon to Bush Jr. What I got was liberal diatribe masked as "history". If you're a left-leaning lib, you'll love this book. If you're a conservative, don't...waste...your...money. I'll be returning this item, and I won't be able to get it out of my house fast enough.
Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-21
Deeply flawed but certainly well-written history
The extreme division among the reviewers of this book reflects a challenge Wilentz notes early on in The Age of Reagan: that it's very hard to write a recent history that anyone will consider objective in any way. His response has been to produce a book that, I think, will manage to disappoint readers on both sides of the political spectrum. Unlike most of the writing on the Reagan era so far-- which has been frankly hagiographic-- Wilentz pays attention to the scandals and missteps of the administration, including a lively portrayal of Iran-contra and a walkthrough of the S&L scandal. He mixes praise and critique in his portrayal of Reagan; later presidents, including the Bushes, do not fare as well. The reviews here make it clear how unwilling conservative readers are to revisit the S&L scandal years, or to confront the fate of Reaganomics... and yet liberal readers are unlikely to be completely comfortable with Wilentz's persistent focus on presidential politics and foreign policy as *the* defining elements of the age of Reagan. The fate of the poor, of women's programs, and of education under Reagan are not mentioned; some may join me in gaping at his description of the first Bush as an environmentalist who quickly stepped up after the Exxon Valdez incident (with the spill "cleaned up by mid-September"-- actually, Sean, the clean-up is still going on). Clinton's shenanigans with Monica rate dozens of pages; Anita Hill gets a paragraph. In other words, conservatives are unlikely to like everything this book includes, while liberals will probably be ruffled by what this book leaves out.
Beyond that, there are a couple of wider issues, centering around Wilentz's yen for sweeping statements. Certainly the statement that Reagan, "like many children of alcoholics, could not distinguish fact from fiction" made me yearn for a footnote... More importantly, instead of framing his argument as an examination of Reagan and his influence, he insists from the first sentence that the period from 1932 to 1970 was one of liberal reform (Joe McCarthy and Eisenhower would probably not agree) while 1974-present is one of conservative ascendency (despite the Clinton years, Bush's scrape-by win in 2000, etc.) Despite the liveliness of the writing, such sweeping statements really undermine this book, and raise questions about its suitability for, for example, a history classroom.
All that said, this book is well-written, and a quick read. If you have any opinion at all on the last four decades you'll probably find something in here to annoy you, but despite that I did enjoy revisiting the period with this author. Wilentz does help create a big picture of the era, and disagreeing with various of its elements, and arguing with his conclusions out loud as you read it, can be seen as entertaining or frustrating, depending on how seriously you want to take it. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-19
book- age of reagan
unacceptable.
part of a larger order- 2 items never received- about to dispute entire order w/amex. |
