The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

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The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

Author: Sean Wilentz
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 2008
Pages: 576
Cover Price: $ 27.95

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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 never have 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.

The Age of Reagan raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about our nation's recent past.

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Background Information

Ronald Reagan moved from moderate success as a movie actor to become governor of California and president of the United States. The conservative movement began as a reaction to the dominance of liberalism at the federal level during the Democratic administrations from FDR to LBJ.