Movie Nights With The Reagans

The former special advisor and press secretary to President Ronald Reagan shares a “sentimental but often revealing…enjoyable walk down Memory Lane” (Kirkus Reviews)—told through the movies he watched with the Reagans every week at Camp David. Over the course of eight years, Mark Weinberg travelled to Camp David with Ronald and Nancy Reagan as they screened movies on Friday and Saturday nights. They watched movies in times of triumph, such as the aftermath of Reagan’s 1984 landslide, and after moments of tragedy, such as the explosion of the Challenger and the shooting of the President and Press Secretary Jim Brady. Weinberg’s unparalleled access offers a rare glimpse of the Reagans—unscripted, relaxed, unburdened by the world, with no cameras in sight. Each chapter discusses a legendary film, what the Reagans thought of it, and provides warm anecdotes and untold stories about his family and the administration. From Reagan’s pranks on the Secret Service to his thoughts on the parallels between Hollywood and Washington, Weinberg paints a full picture of the president The New Yorker once famously dubbed “The Unknowable.” A “meander through a simpler time capturing a different time and a different president” (USA TODAY), Movie Nights with the Reagans is a nostalgic journey through the 1980s and its most iconic films, seen through the eyes of one of Hollywood’s former stars: one who was simultaneously transforming the Republican Party, the American economy, and the course of the Cold War. “For those equally enthused about movies and the fortieth president, this book will serve as a welcome change from today’s political climate” (Publishers Weekly).

Named a Best Book of the Year by Financial Times "Singular, stylish and slightly intoxicating in its scope." —Rolling Stone Acclaimed media critic J. Hoberman's masterful and majestic exploration of the Reagan years as seen through the unforgettable movies of the era The third book in a brilliant and ambitious trilogy, celebrated cultural and film critic J. Hoberman's Make My Day is a major new work of film and pop culture history. In it he chronicles the Reagan years, from the waning days of the Watergate scandal when disaster films like Earthquake ruled the box office to the nostalgia of feel-good movies like Rocky and Star Wars, and the delirium of the 1984 presidential campaign and beyond. Bookended by the Bicentennial celebrations and the Iran-Contra affair, the period of Reagan's ascendance brought such movie events as Jaws, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Ghostbusters, Blue Velvet, and Back to the Future, as well as the birth of MTV, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Second Cold War. An exploration of the synergy between American politics and popular culture, Make My Day is the concluding volume of Hoberman's Found Illusions trilogy; the first volume, The Dream Life, was described by Slate's David Edelstein as "one of the most vital cultural histories I've ever read"; Film Comment called the second, An Army of Phantoms, "utterly compulsive reading." Reagan, a supporting player in Hoberman's previous volumes, here takes center stage as the peer of Indiana Jones and John Rambo, the embodiment of a Hollywood that, even then, no longer existed.

The former First Lady discusses her life, the Reagan administration, her shaky relationship with her children and key White House personnel, her husband’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, and her bout with cancer. “During our White House years I said almost nothing about how I really felt regarding the controversies that swirled around me. . . . But now those years are over, and it’s my turn to describe what happened. . . .” About Ronald Reagan: “Although Ronnie loves people, he often seems remote, and he doesn’t let anybody get too close. There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.” About being a mother: “What I wanted most in all the world was to be a good wife and mother. As things turned out, I guess I’ve been more successful at the first than at the second.” About her influence: “I make no apologies for telling Ronnie what I thought. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you have no right to express your opinions. For eight years I was sleeping with the president, and if that doesn’t give you special access, I don’t know what does.” About astrology: “What it boils down to is that each person has his or her own ways of coping with trauma and grief, with the pain of life, and astrology was one of mine. Don’t criticize me, I wanted to say, until you have stood in my place. This helped me. Nobody was hurt by it—except, possibly, me.” About Don Regan: “His very first day on the job, Don said that he saw himself as the ‘chief operating officer’ of the country. But he was hired to be chief of staff. . . . Although I believed for a long time that Donald Regan was in the wrong job, my ‘power’ in getting him to leave has been greatly exaggerated. Believe me, if I really were the dragon lady that he described in his book, he would have been out the door many months earlier.”

Hailed by the New Yorker as "a superlative study of a president and his presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the first actor to be elected president, turned in the performance of a lifetime. But that performance concealed the complexities of the man, baffling most who came in contact with him. Who was the man behind the makeup? Only Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan through his political career, can tell us. The keenest Reagan-watcher of them all, he has been the only author to reveal the nature of a man both shrewd and oblivious. Based on hundreds of interviews with the president, the First Lady, and hundreds of the administration's major figures, President Reagan takes us behind the scenes of the Oval Office. Cannon leads us through all of Reagan's roles, from the affable cowboy to the self-styled family man; from the politician who denounced big government to the president who created the largest peace-time deficit; from the statesman who reviled the Soviet government to the Great Communicator who helped end the cold war.

Reagan’s War is the story of Ronald Reagan’s personal and political journey as an anti-communist, from his early days as an actor to his years in the White House. Challenging popular misconceptions of Reagan as an empty suit who played only a passive role in the demise of the Soviet Union, Peter Schweizer details Reagan’s decades-long battle against communism. Bringing to light previously secret information obtained from archives in the United States, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia—including Reagan’s KGB file—Schweizer offers a compelling case that Reagan personally mapped out and directed his war against communism, often disagreeing with experts and advisers. An essential book for understanding the Cold War, Reagan’s War should be read by open-minded readers across the political spectrum.

The compelling biography of an American icon’s early years–as an aspiring actor, Hollywood star, and family man. Ronald Reagan was one of the most powerful and popular American presidents. The key to understanding his political success and the remarkable likability and effortless charisma that made it possible lies embedded in his early years as a Hollywood movie star. Using never-before-published interviews, documents, and other materials, acclaimed writer and biographer Marc Eliot sheds new light on Reagan’s film and television work opposite some of the most talented women of the time; his starlet-strewn bachelor days; his tumultuous first marriage to Jane Wyman and his career-making second marriage to Nancy Davis; his controversial eight years as the president of the Screen Actors Guild; his place in the “Irish Mafia” alongside Pat O’Brien, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and Errol Flynn; and his friendships with Jimmy Stewart and William Holden, as well as with super-agent Lew Wasserman, who was instrumental in developing the persona that would prove essential to Reagan’s future as a world leader. Set against the glamorous and often combative background of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Eliot’s biography provides a nuanced examination of the man and uncovers the startling origins of the legend. “A fresh look . . . [at] the genesis of Reagan’s later public persona.” —New York Times “Film critic and historian Marc Eliot has dug up even more about young sportscaster ‘Dutch’ Reagan, his journey west to Hollywood, his B-movie career . . . his relationship with super-agent Lew Wasserman, and his rocky marriage to his first wife, actresss Jane Wyman.” —USA Today

The most important speeches of America's "Great Communicator": Here, in his own words, is the record of Ronald Reagan's remarkable political career and historic eight-year presidency.

Ronald Reagan’s autobiography is a work of major historical importance. Here, in his own words, is the story of his life—public and private—told in a book both frank and compellingly readable. Few presidents have accomplished more, or been so effective in changing the direction of government in ways that are both fundamental and lasting, than Ronald Reagan. Certainly no president has more dramatically raised the American spirit, or done so much to restore national strength and self-confidence. Here, then, is a truly American success story—a great and inspiring one. From modest beginnings as the son of a shoe salesman in Tampico, Illinois, Ronald Reagan achieved first a distinguished career in Hollywood and then, as governor of California and as president of the most powerful nation in the world, a career of public service unique in our history. Ronald Reagan’s account of that rise is told here with all the uncompromising candor, modesty, and wit that made him perhaps the most able communicator ever to occupy the White House, and also with the sense of drama of a gifted natural storyteller. He tells us, with warmth and pride, of his early years and of the elements that made him, in later life, a leader of such stubborn integrity, courage, and clear-minded optimism. Reading the account of this childhood, we understand how his parents, struggling to make ends meet despite family problems and the rigors of the Depression, shaped his belief in the virtues of American life—the need to help others, the desire to get ahead and to get things done, the deep trust in the basic goodness, values, and sense of justice of the American people—virtues that few presidents have expressed more eloquently than Ronald Reagan. With absolute authority and a keen eye for the details and the anecdotes that humanize history, Ronald Reagan takes the reader behind the scenes of his extraordinary career, from his first political experiences as president of the Screen Actors Guild (including his first meeting with a beautiful young actress who was later to become Nancy Reagan) to such high points of his presidency as the November 1985 Geneva meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, during which Reagan invited the Soviet leader outside for a breath of fresh air and then took him off for a walk and a man-to-man chat, without aides, that set the course for arms reduction and charted the end of the Cold War. Here he reveals what went on behind his decision to enter politics and run for the governorship of California, the speech nominating Barry Goldwater that first made Reagan a national political figure, his race for the presidency, his relations with the members of his own cabinet, and his frustrations with Congress. He gives us the details of the great themes and dramatic crises of his eight years in office, from Lebanon to Grenada, from the struggle to achieve arms control to tax reform, from Iran-Contra to the visits abroad that did so much to reestablish the United States in the eyes of the world as a friendly and peaceful power. His narrative is full of insights, from the unseen dangers of Gorbachev’s first visit to the United States to Reagan’s own personal correspondence with major foreign leaders, as well as his innermost feelings about life in the White House, the assassination attempt, his family—and the enduring love between himself and Mrs. Reagan. An American Life is a warm, richly detailed, and deeply human book, a brilliant self-portrait, a significant work of history.