President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination

· Simon and Schuster
4.5
2条评价
电子书
592
符合条件
评分和评价未经验证  了解详情

关于此电子书

Twenty-five years after Ronald Reagan became president, Richard Reeves has written a surprising and revealing portrait of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. As he did in his bestselling books President Kennedy: Profile of Power and President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Reeves has used newly declassified documents and hundreds of interviews to show a president at work day by day, sometimes minute by minute.

President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination is the story of an accomplished politician, a bold, even reckless leader, a gambler, a man who imagined an American past and an American future -- and made them real. He is a man of ideas who changed the world for better or worse, a man who understands that words are often more important than deeds. Reeves shows a man who understands how to be President, who knows that the job is not to manage the government but to lead the nation. In many ways, a quarter of a century later, he is still leading. As his vice president, George H. W. Bush, said after Reagan was shot and hospitalized in 1981: "We will act as if he were here."

He is a heroic figure if not always a hero. He did not destroy communism, as his champions claim, but he knew it would self-destruct and hastened the collapse. No small thing. He believed the Soviet Union was evil and he had contempt for the established American policies of containment and détente. Asked about his own Cold War strategy, he answered: "We win. They lose!"

Like one of his heroes, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has become larger than life. As Roosevelt became an icon central to American liberalism, Reagan became the nucleus holding together American conservatism. He is the only president whose name became a political creed, a noun not an adjective: "Reaganism."

Reagan's ideas were so old they seemed new. He preached an individualism, inspiring and cruel, that isolated and shamed the halt and the lame. He dumbed-down America, brilliantly blending fact and fiction, transforming political debate into emotion-driven entertainment. He recklessly mortgaged America with uncontrolled military spending, less taxation, and more debt.

In focusing on the key moments of the Reagan presidency, Reeves recounts the amazing resiliency of Ronald Reagan, the real "comeback kid." Here is a seventy-year-old man coming back from a near-fatal gunshot wound, from cancer, from the worst recession in American history. Then, in personal despair as his administration was shredded by the lying and secrets of hidden wars and double-dealing, he was able to forge one of history's amazing relationships with the leader of "the Evil Empire." That story is told for the first time using the transcripts of the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings, the climax of an epic story -- as if he were here.

评分和评价

4.5
2条评价

作者简介

Richard Reeves is the author of presidential bestsellers, including President Nixon and President Kennedy, acclaimed as the best nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine. A syndicated columnist and winner of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award, he lives in New York and Los Angeles.

为此电子书评分

欢迎向我们提供反馈意见。

如何阅读

智能手机和平板电脑
只要安装 AndroidiPad/iPhone 版的 Google Play 图书应用,不仅应用内容会自动与您的账号同步,还能让您随时随地在线或离线阅览图书。
笔记本电脑和台式机
您可以使用计算机的网络浏览器聆听您在 Google Play 购买的有声读物。
电子阅读器和其他设备
如果要在 Kobo 电子阅读器等电子墨水屏设备上阅读,您需要下载一个文件,并将其传输到相应设备上。若要将文件传输到受支持的电子阅读器上,请按帮助中心内的详细说明操作。