Reagan S Journey

A RENOWNED LEADERSHIP EXPERT EXAMINES THE LIFE OF R ONALD REAGAN, EXTRACTING THE KEY C OMPONENTS OF HIS IMMENSE S UCCESS—PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL—AND OFFERS AN ILLUMINATING MODEL F OR LEADERS AND MANAGERS IN EVERY WALK OF LIFE. Since leaving office, Ronald Reagan has emerged as among America’s greatest— and best-loved—leaders. Today he is known as “the Great Communicator,” but in the course of his sixty-year career, Reagan faced obstacles and hardships that could have stalled him at any point along the way. After every disaster, he picked himself up and kept moving forward. How did he manage his career and handle the hurdles involved in transitioning from actor and union official into a public speaker in high demand and from there into an extraordinarily successful politician? What can we learn from the way the perennial “new kid in town” muscled through adversities, maintained his focus, stayed true to his principles, and achieved his goals? In a compelling narrative that is both a motivational leadership teaching tool and a fascinating biography, bestselling author Margot Morrell sheds light on the challenges and heartbreaks that shaped Ronald Reagan. Four times his life slammed into a brick wall: his 1948 divorce from actress Jane Wyman; the termination of his long-standing contract with Warner Bros.; the end of his eight-year association with General Electric; and a hard-fought loss to President Gerald Ford in the 1976 primary campaign. Setting politics and policies largely aside, Morrell highlights the strategies and tactics Ronald Reagan used to transform himself from shy introvert to confident communicator; the methods and tools he employed to keep his career on track; and the skills he developed that led to his many accomplishments. Each chapter of Reagan’s Journey is followed by summary bullet points and an essential overview titled “Working It In,” to facilitate these lessons into your formation as a leader. Anyone interested in strengthening their leadership and communications skills, becoming more resilient in the face of setbacks, or taking their careers to the next level will find practical and useful lessons in the life of Ronald Reagan.

In this new work, Edward Yager examines Ronald Reagan's political development from New Deal liberal to conservative Republican. Yager argues that Reagan's presidency cannot be fully understood and evaluated without significant attribution to the spiritual, political, and economic beliefs that he formed during his journey from Democrat to Republican.

Ronald Reagan’s inability to sway the American public and press with his speeches at the former site of the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and, later, at the U.S. Air Force base in Bitburg, Germany, has been marked by many as the first major failure of the Great Communicator’s second term. Richard J. Jensen highlights the qualities of the speeches that make them, in his estimation, models of presidential discourse. But he also looks at the setting for the speeches—political and historical—that doomed them despite their eloquence. Telescoping in from the broadest perspective on Reagan’s rhetorical career; to the circumstances surrounding the decision to make the speeches; to the drafting, delivery, and reception of the texts, Jensen contrasts these two speeches with two very successful ones Reagan had delivered in Normandy the previous year. The result is a vivid picture of a man and a moment in history. Students and all those interested in public discourse and the presidency will deeply benefit from this mature work by a major scholar of rhetoric.

From New York Times bestselling biographer Bob Spitz, a full and rich biography of an epic American life, capturing what made Ronald Reagan both so beloved and so transformational. More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, and infused with irresistible storytelling charm, Bob Spitz's REAGAN stands fair to be the first truly post-partisan biography of our 40th President, and thus a balm for our own bitterly divided times. It is the quintessential American triumph, brought to life with cinematic vividness: a young man is born into poverty and raised in a series of flyspeck towns in the Midwest by a pious mother and a reckless, alcoholic, largely absent father. Severely near-sighted, the boy lives in his own world, a world of the popular books of the day, and finds his first brush with popularity, even fame, as a young lifeguard. Thanks to his first great love, he imagines a way out, and makes the extraordinary leap to go to college, a modest school by national standards, but an audacious presumption in the context of his family's station. From there, the path is only very dimly lit, but it leads him, thanks to his great charm and greater luck, to a solid career as a radio sportscaster, and then, astonishingly, fatefully, to Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Bob Spitz's REAGAN is an absorbing, richly detailed, even revelatory chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life - giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and rocky but ultimately successful run as California governor, and ultimately, of course, his iconic presidency, filled with storm and stress but climaxing with his peace talks with the Soviet Union that would serve as his greatest legacy. It is filled with fresh assessments and shrewd judgments, and doesn't flinch from a full reckoning with the man's strengths and limitations. This is no hagiography: Reagan was never a brilliant student, of anything, and his disinterest in hard-nosed political scheming, while admirable, meant that this side of things was left to the other people in his orbit, not least his wife Nancy; sometimes this delegation could lead to chaos, and worse. But what emerges as a powerful signal through all the noise is an honest inherent sweetness, a gentleness of nature and willingness to see the good in people and in this country, that proved to be a tonic for America in his time, and still is in ours. It was famously said that FDR had a first-rate disposition and a second-rate intellect. Perhaps it is no accident that only FDR had as high a public approval rating leaving office as Reagan did, or that in the years since Reagan has been closing in on FDR on rankings of Presidential greatness. Written with love and irony, which in a great biography is arguably the same thing, Bob Spitz's masterpiece will give no comfort to partisans at either extreme; for the rest of us, it is cause for celebration.

In this ambitious work David T. Byrne analyzes the ideas that informed Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy and policies. Rather than appraising Reagan’s personal and emotional life, Byrne’s intellectual biography goes one step further; it establishes a rationale for the former president’s motives, discussing how thinkers such as Plato and Adam Smith influenced him. Byrne points to three historical forces that shaped Reagan’s political philosophy: Christian values, particularly the concept of a universal kingdom of God; America’s firm belief in freedom as the greatest political value and its aversion to strong centralized government; and the appeasement era of World War II, which stimulated Reagan’s aggressive and confrontational foreign policy. Byrne’s account of the fortieth president augments previous work on Reagan with a new model for understanding him. Byrne shows how Reagan took conservatism and the Republican Party in a new direction, departing from the traditional conservatism of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. His desire to spread a “Kingdom of Freedom” both at home and abroad changed America’s political landscape forever and inspired a new conservatism that persists to this day.

How did Ronald Reagan go from calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” in his first term as president to saying the US had “forged a satisfying new closeness” with the Soviets by the end of his second term? In Reagan’s Soviet Rhetoric: Telling the Soviet Redemption Story, rhetorical scholar Mark LaVoie examines the ways Reagan negotiated his shift from a vehemently anti-communist discourse to a rhetoric of guarded optimism about the future of US-Soviet relations that ultimately revealed a Soviet redemption narrative. Following Reagan’s Soviet rhetoric from his 1947 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee to his Farewell Address in 1989, LaVoie considers the President’s use of “Soviet/Nazi analogy,” “historical narrative,” “reciprocity,” and other rhetorical strategies in creating the narrative. Scholars and students of rhetoric, history, and international relations will find this book particularly interesting.

In the 1960s transitioning from acting to politics was rare. Ronald Reagan was not the first to do it, but he was the first to jump from the screen to the stump and on to credibility as a presidential contender. Reagan’s transformation from struggling liberal actor to influential conservative spokesman in five years—and then to the California governorship six years later—is a remarkable and compelling story. In Becoming Ronald Reagan Robert Mann explores Reagan’s early life and his career during the 1950s and early 1960s: his growing desire for acclaim in high school and college, his political awakening as a young Hollywood actor, his ideological evolution in the 1950s as he traveled the country for General Electric, the refining of his political skills during this period, his growing aversion to big government, and his disdain for the totalitarian leaders in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. All these experiences and more shaped Reagan’s politics and influenced his career as an elected official. Mann not only demonstrates how Reagan the actor became Reagan the political leader and how the liberal became a conservative, he also shows how the skills Reagan learned and the lessons he absorbed from 1954 to 1964 made him the inspiring leader so many Americans remember and revere to this day. Becoming Ronald Reagan is an indelible portrait of a true American icon and a politician like none other.

A Companion to Ronald Reagan evaluates in unprecedented detail the events, policies, politics, and people of Reagan’s administration. It assesses the scope and influence of his various careers within the context of the times, providing wide-ranging coverage of his administration, and his legacy. Assesses Reagan and his impact on the development of the United States based on new documentary evidence and engagement with the most recent secondary literature Offers a mix of historiographic chapters devoted to foreign and domestic policy, with topics integrated thematically and chronologically Includes a section on key figures associated politically and personally with Reagan