The Age of Reagan: A History,
1974-2008 (American History) by
Sean Wilentz
The Thirty Years War(P)
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 dominated American politics and
government from 1974 to 2008. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz, one
of our nations leading historians, accounts for how a conservative
movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it,
and describes the momentous consequences that followed.
Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of
Reagan is a groundbreaking chronicle of Americas political history since
the fall of Nixon.

Personal Review: The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008
(American History) by Sean Wilentz
Nothing in Sean Wilentz's history of American politics from 1974 to 2008
took me by surprise, except perhaps the author's willingness to give
Ronald Reagan the recognition due for his political savvy and charisma.
Most Reagan denigrators -- and I admit that I have been one -- have
regarded him as a hyped-up Howdy Doody, a useful front for 'conservative'
kingmakers. Wilentz actually credits Reagan with being his own man, the
master of his own White House, and furthermore with being more flexible
and open to pragmatic compromise than either his coterie of advisors or
his latter-day disciples. Withholding judgment of his 'ends', Wilentz
portrays Reagan as indeed the dominant figure of his Age, far more a man
of 'means' than the three presidents who preceded him or the three who
followed. Discussing the diplomacy that led to the INF treaty in 1987 as
well as other steps toward nuclear disarmament, Wilentz writes:
"To complete that triumph of diplomacy and goodwill, Reagan had to
withstand the criticism of many who had informed and reinforced his views
of the Soviets for decades but who lacked his own understanding with
Gorbachev and other reformers now in control of the Kremlin, a great
change was at hand. Call it a triumph of character or idealism or
perceptiveness or "wishful thinking" (in George Will's term), or some
combination of these. But Reagan's ability to dispense with dogma
(including his own) and negotiate with Gorbachev helped bring an end to a
nuclear arms race that had terrified the world for forty years. ... Reagan
deserves posterity's honor for not adhering stubbornly to the ideas and
strategies of cold war conservatism and neoconservatism... His success in
helping finally to end the cold war is one of the greatest achievements by
any president of the United States -- and arguably the greatest single
presidential accomplishment since 1945." (p 281)
Wilentz goes to town, as it were, in distinguishing between the solid core of
ideas and ideals to which Reagan adhered, and the sundry rigid ideologies
proclaimed in his name by his fragmented political heirs --
neoconservatives, fundamentalist reactionaries, states' rights bigots, free-
market dogmatists, anarcho-capitalists, and fanatical libertarians, all of
whom paid obeisance to a different idol. All except the evangelicals could
be lumped as neoliberals in economic doctrine, but their unreconcilable
ideologies and their willingness to 'fight dirty' to impose their ideas on
teverybody fused together in the presidency of George W Bush, whom
Wilentz perceives as the eventual hypertrophy (the grotesque and
unfunctional exaggeration) of "Reaganism," which led to the debacles both
foreign and domestic, and the collapse of the conservative paradigm.
The chapters treating Ronald Reagan himself are by far the most
interesting of the book. Wilentz has scant praise for any of the other six
presidents of the Age, and certainly no bias in favor of either Jimmy Carter
or Bill Clinton. Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II all

represented 'failed' presidencies on either economic or diplomatic fronts, or
both. In fact, the failures of the Carter administration opened the path for
the ascendancy of anti-New Deal crusaders, and the embarrassments of
the Clinton administrations, even despite economic recovery, facilitated the
disaster of Bush II, with its manifold violations of the Constitution and the
Rule of Law.
The Age of Reagan is not a radical revision of anything. It's not based on
secret knowledge, long-hidden files, or meticulous academic
documentation. It was all in the newspapers, all public info. Anyone whose
middle years, like mine, were lived out in the decades from Nixon to GWB,
who followed events and who has a decent memory, could honestly have
compiled the same text (given the literary skills and editorial discipline).
Wilentz tells it just as I remember it! Later historians will dissect, differ over
details, and document endlessly, but Wilentz has written the first basic "fair
and balanced" history of the rise and fall of the peculiar ideology of
American conservatism.
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