The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 » (Reprint)

Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, is the author or editor of seven books, including Chants Democratic and The Rise of American Democracy. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

From one of the nation's leading historians comes a powerful reappraisal of American political life in the era after Watergate.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz takes no prisoners. He has ranked George W. Bush among the absolute worst presidents and faulted Barack Obama's media supporters as dupes of "instinct" politics; in the 1990s he mixed it up with right-wingers trying to bring down President Clinton. Equally at home commenting on hip trends in music, social criticism, race relations, and current politics, Wilentz combines the reflexes of a street fighter with the formidable apparatus of American scholarship. In this work, which follows on the success of The Rise of American Democracy, his well-received earlier effort to contextualize Jefferson and Jackson in pre–Civil War America, Wilentz attempts to place Ronald Reagan's reinvigoration of the conservative movement and his presidency in the broad sweep of post-Watergate America.

Prologue: July 4,1976 14

1 Memories of the Ford Administration 26

2 Detente and Its Discontents 48

3 Jimmy Carter and the Agonies of Anti-Politics 73

4 Human Rights and Democratic Collapse 99

5 New Morning 127

6 Confronting the Evil Empire 151

7 "Call It Mysticism If You Will" 176

8 "We Have an Undercover Thing": The Iran-Contra Affair 209

9 "Another Time, Another Era" 245

10 Reaganism and Realism 288

11 The Politics of Clintonism 323

12 Clinton's Comeback 355

13 Animosities and Interest: The Impeachment of Clinton 382

14 Irreparable Harm: The Election of 2000 408

Epilogue: October 13,2001 432

Notes 461

Selected Sources and Readings 515

Index 545