New Yorker - Daniel Immerwahr
"Reagan: His Life and Legend aims to be the definitive biography, and it succeeds. It’s a thoughtful, absorbing account. It’s also a surprising one. One might expect, given Boot’s trajectory, that this would be a full-throated defense of Reagan, the Last Good Republican. But it is not. Although Boot once felt ‘incredulous that anyone could possibly compare Reagan to Trump,’ he now sees ‘startling similarities.’... Recent events have forced Boot to ask if Reagan was part of the rot that has eaten away at Republicanism. Boot now sees him as complicit in the “hard-right turn” the Party took after Dwight D. Eisenhower which helped set the G.O.P.—and the country—on the path to Trump…. And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could relax his ideology…. He viewed the world in black-and-white, yet he governed in gray."
John Brandon
"My favorite book of the fall, and one that is quite the beast to read at 880 pages, Reagan takes us inside the mind of the 40th President. Max Boot is an exceptional writer who crafts a compelling and detailed narrative."
Richard North Patterson
"Max Boot’s Reagan biography is superb—in my judgment, definitive. He has achieved what Edmund Morris could not—a coherent and compelling portrait of an enigmatic and elusive figure, one which is also notably fair-minded."
Karen Tumulty
"This comprehensive biography—relying on a decade of research, unearthed records, and revealing interviews—separates man from myth, offering a compelling and clear-eyed portrait of this consequential president and the country he shaped."
New York Times Book Review
"The actor Ronald Reagan started his political career as a New Deal Democrat who fought for social justice. He ended it as the Republican president of the United States. In this biography, Boot — a notable historian who fell out of love with conservatism as another American president, Donald J. Trump, took over the movement — tells Reagan’s story, tugging at the enigma of his life and searching for the seeds of Trumpism in the works and days of the 40th president."
New York Times
"This elegant biography of the 40th president stands out for its deep authority and nimble style. Boot, a historian and foreign policy analyst, grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan, but after a decade of interviews and research, he finds himself asking whether his onetime hero paved the way for Donald Trump, the man whose ascent to power led Boot to abandon the right. The book is a landmark work that shows how Reagan emerged from his New Deal roots to become a practiced Red baiter and racist dog whistler before settling into the role of the optimistic all-American elder statesman. “It is no exaggeration,” Boot writes, 'to say that you cannot fully comprehend what happened to America in the 20th century without first understanding what happened to Ronald Reagan.'"
New York Times - Brent Staples
"Max Boot’s new biography of Ronald Reagan deals candidly with aspects of the 40th president’s politics that Reagan’s worshipers prefer to not see."
Houston Press - Bob Ruggiero
"A decade in the making, Boot uses newly unclassified documents, new reporting and analysis, and original interviews with more than 100 sources to craft the possible definitive look at the man…. [Boot writes] deftly and evenhandedly…. So, while every reader will go into his massive work with a set different idea of Reagan the man, by the end of Reagan the book, those ideas may just change a bit. For better or worse."
The Observer - Peter Conrad
"[A] generous yet sharply perceptive biography."
The Daily Telegraph - Philip Johnston
"As seen throughout Reagan, Boot’s readable and insightful biography, the future enemy of the Soviet Union was defined by that rural upbringing, with its limitations – insularity, unworldliness, provinciality – balanced by its strengths: an innate decency and politeness, underpinned by a powerful sense of right and wrong."
The Economist
"This remoteness has frustrated previous biographers. But Mr. Boot responds with doggedness, evoking Reagan’s early life in small-town Illinois, college years and early forays into politics. Mr. Boot is a gifted enough writer to prevent this accretion of detail from becoming a slog, and Reagan’s apparent lack of an inner life becomes a benefit: it keeps the focus on Reagan’s actions, which matter far more than a politician’s thoughts or feelings. Though his rhetoric may have been strident, his actions, Mr. Boot convincingly argues, were deeply pragmatic. That is what made him so effective when his party never fully controlled Congress. But he also courted segregationists and homophobes for political benefit, even though he professed to hold no racial prejudice."
Stuart K. Spencer
"Well researched and reported accurately. Ronald Reagan was a complicated man, yet a caring one. Max Boot beautifully catches the essence of who he was."
No. 1 on Air Mail's
"Max Boot... provides an unusually well-balanced and vividly written profile of a man almost as enigmatic as his contemporary the American sphinx Johnny Carson."
Michael Giltz
"While not as hagiographic as the new film, Boot’s take on the New Deal Democrat turned demonizer of Medicare & GOP icon is generally sympathetic. It’s Reagan the pragmatist & compromiser, say reviews."
Literary Review - Andrew Preston
"[An] intelligent, elegant and engrossing biography."
Geoffrey Kabaservice
"[A] magisterial new biography... Boot has written the first important Reagan biography of the post-Reagan era…. [His] vivid portrait draws on prodigious research…. [This] splendid biography reminds us that Reagan was the leader many Americans felt they needed at a time when they were looking for national restoration, and they may seek his like again."
The New Yorker
"A movement conservative turned Never Trumper, Boot set out to explore where the G.O.P. went wrong by writing a biography of Ronald Reagan, and the result is a definitive one. Boot idolized Reagan while growing up, but his book is not a defense of Reagan as the Last Good Republican. It takes up Reagan’s hostility to civil rights and Medicare, and deems him complicit in the 'hard-right turn' that 'helped set the G.O.P.—and the country—on the path' to Donald Trump. And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could relax his ideology. He was an anti-tax crusader who oversaw large tax hikes, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment who appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice, and a diehard anti-Communist who made peace with Moscow. He had relinquished 'the dogmas of a lifetime,' Boot writes. This biography carries a pointed message for conservatives: Reagan achieved greatness, Boot argues, by abandoning his ideology."
The New York Review of Books - Jacob Weisberg
"[A] definitive and fair-minded biography…[Boot] finds no difficulty in continuing to admire Reagan the man while castigating his troubled relationship with reality and a management style that he aptly describes as behaving ‘as if he were a bystander in his own administration’....The core quality Boot rightly emphasizes as enabling Reagan’s success was his pragmatism, in many respects akin to that of his early political hero Franklin Roosevelt."
New York Times - Jennifer Burns
"[A] gripping new biography…Boot’s book enters a crowded field, but stands out for its deep research, lucid prose and command of its subject’s broad political and social context….More than half the book covers his life before the presidency, and Boot’s careful focus on Reagan’s early years untangles many of the knots….Boot is particularly good at depicting 1920s small-town America, and he gives full consideration to how religion shaped Reagan’s outlook."
General David Petraeus
"This is the definitive Reagan biography that so many of us have been waiting for. Max Boot clears away the myths and presents the real Ronald Reagan, with all of his strengths and also his shortcomings. If you like biographies, you’ll love Reagan: His Life and Legend."
Sun News Austin - Cliff Cunninham
"“The passage of more than 30 years since he left office,” writes Boot, “affords the kind of understanding of his presidency that historians finally achieved only in the 1980s for the Eisenhower administration.” Boot says that while a huge number of books about Reagan exist, none could be described as a “definitive biography, which is what I was trying to achieve.” Even Reagan’s own children have told Boot they learned new things about their father in the book, so perhaps he has succeeded."
Air Mail - Jonathan Darman
"A worthy, impressive example of what a new era in Reagan biography might hold. Boot’s book, the product of a decade’s careful research, presents the fascinatingly contradictory reality of Reagan...Boot’s accounts excels by embracing rather than eliding the paradoxes of Reagan’s political career."
Christian Science Monitor
"Forty years after Ronald Reagan’s last run for the White House, journalist and foreign policy analyst Max Boot constructs the most extensive biography to date of the 40th U.S. president. Boot points to Reagan as a public figure who was famously difficult to know, though the author does his best to capture the 20th century’s most dominant conservative by talking with Reagan’s associates."
starred review Booklist
"Using newly released documents and the perspective of decades, Boot portrays Reagan as a principled conservative, but also a pragmatist who thoughtfully compromised to attain achievable results… Boot’s clear-headed biography brims with insightful anecdotes and clears away myth to give a more solid portrait of a remarkable politician."
Notre Dame Magazine - Robert Schmuhl
"One of the most gripping chapters of Reagan focuses on the assassination attempt that seriously wounded the new president in March 1981. In this almost minute-by-minute account — reminiscent of Robert Caro’s superb reporting and writing in his multivolume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson — a reader learns exactly what happened and what was said. Amazingly, Reagan remained jovial despite the mortal danger. The dozen pages Boot devotes to the shooting and its aftermath are unforgettable."
NPR - Andrew Limbong
"For the person in your life obsessed with presidential biographies, Boot’s newest book is a deeply reported look into the life of Ronald Reagan. Covering his childhood, his Hollywood years and, of course, his presidency, Boot portrays a man that is somehow both more ideological and more pragmatic than we might think."
Foreign Affairs - Susan B. Glasser
"Timely, authoritative, and admirably evenhanded... Boot’s book strikes a welcome tone of calm, fact-driven appraisal about a subject who continues to attract over-the-top partisan puffery. It is a nuanced portrait of Reagan for this very unnuanced age... It’s impossible to read Boot’s careful book and hold on to the seductive fallacy that Reagan possessed some sort of magic template for eradicating communist dictatorships or a playbook that could work again today if only applied with enough forceful resolve. And yet Reagan still manages here to come across as the hero that perhaps he was at first for Boot—an architect, if not the sole author, of the Soviet demise, who earned a place in history for helping “to peacefully end a 40-year struggle that could have resulted in nuclear Armageddon."
Dominic Sandbrook
"[An] impeccably researched and thoroughly compelling new biography…. Thanks to Boot’s enormously readable and scrupulously honest book, we know more than ever before about this complicated, frustrating and yet oddly magnetic man."
Walter Isaacson
"This is a timely and fascinating book, just what we need to understand, and perhaps transcend, our current age of political paralysis and polarization. Understanding Reagan is key to understanding our politics today."
Booklist (starred review)
Boot’s clear-headed biography brims with insightful anecdotes and clears away myth to give a more solid portrait of a remarkable politician."
NPR
Covering his childhood, his Hollywood years and, of course, his presidency, Boot portrays a man that is somehow both more ideological and more pragmatic than we might think.”
Washington Post
[A] magisterial new biography…the first important Reagan biography of the post-Reagan era."
Houston Press
A decade in the making, Boot uses newly unclassified documents, new reporting and analysis, and original interviews with more than 100 sources to craft the possible definitive look at the man."
The New Yorker
"A movement conservative turned Never Trumper, Boot set out to explore where the G.O.P. went wrong by writing a biography of Ronald Reagan, and the result is a definitive one. Boot idolized Reagan while growing up, but his book is not a defense of Reagan as the Last Good Republican. It takes up Reagan’s hostility to civil rights and Medicare, and deems him complicit in the 'hard-right turn' that 'helped set the G.O.P.—and the country—on the path' to Donald Trump. And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could relax his ideology. He was an anti-tax crusader who oversaw large tax hikes, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment who appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice, and a diehard anti-Communist who made peace with Moscow. He had relinquished 'the dogmas of a lifetime,' Boot writes. This biography carries a pointed message for conservatives: Reagan achieved greatness, Boot argues, by abandoning his ideology."
"19 New Books Coming in September" New York Times Book Review
"The actor Ronald Reagan started his political career as a New Deal Democrat who fought for social justice. He ended it as the Republican president of the United States. In this biography, Boot — a notable historian who fell out of love with conservatism as another American president, Donald J. Trump, took over the movement — tells Reagan’s story, tugging at the enigma of his life and searching for the seeds of Trumpism in the works and days of the 40th president."
OCTOBER 2024 - AudioFile
Graham Winton is the perfect narrator to deliver this biography of Ronald Reagan, the Midwesterner who became a Hollywood actor, governor of California, and the fortieth president of the United States. Immediately engaging, Winton sounds consistently interested and earnest as he brings political analyst and historian Max Boot's deeply impressive work to life. In a tone of authority, Winton enlivens Boot's discussions of the conservative values that drove Reagan's leadership and life. Winton also captures the pragmatic attitude and tone Reagan frequently employed to achieve his legislative and life goals. A talented narrator, Winton implies more than one "wink" when explaining Reagan's pervasive optimism and often self-deprecating humor. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-05-17
The historian and foreign-policy analyst presents an unabashed revisionist history of the 40th president of the U.S.
Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Road Not Taken and Invisible Armies, sets out to present Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) in full: the enigmatic man of contradictions who had a singular talent for connecting with millions of constituents while being a conflict-avoiding introvert little known to his own family as well as associates who famously eluded and “flummoxed” official biographer Edmund Morris, whose Dutch was “an experimental, quasi-fictional book that was widely criticized.” The amount of research Boot conducted is immense, and his portrait of Reagan is enhanced not only by the passage of time since Reagan's administrations, but by the author’s 100+ forthright interviews and the availability of more archival materials. Boot brings to light the familial, social, and religious influences that shaped Reagan's Midwestern childhood; the skills he honed as a sportscaster and actor, which reinforced the all-American persona that he would display on the world stage; and his intriguing work as an FBI informant during the Hollywood blacklist era. The author also produces a no-holds-barred account of Reagan's terms as California governor and U.S. president. Boot's account of the life and times of Reagan is, as promised, no hagiography. Occasionally, however, the author overreaches in his attempts to demonstrate his independence with odd quips and obvious points that diminish the quality of the text. Yet Boot goes further than any other biography—with the exception of H.W. Brands’ 2015 portrait—in completing the story of an essentially unknowable individual who was "hiding in plain sight” yet whose ideological metamorphosis was fundamental to understanding the political and social transformations of the U.S. in the second half of the 20th century.
A prodigiously researched, satisfying presidential bio.
