PROGRAM

In his latest book, prizewinning historian H.W. Brands, author of the bestselling Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, turns his attention to Ronald Reagan, whom Brand argues was one of the two great presidents of the twentieth century, a true peer to FDR. In his talk at Roosevelt House, Brands will discuss Reagan’s life and presidency, explaining how the confident force of Reagan’s personality and the unwavering nature of his beliefs enabled him to engineer a conservative revolution in American politics and play a crucial role in ending communism in the Soviet Union. Reagan is based on archival sources not available to previous biographers and draws as well on dozens of interviews with surviving members of Reagan’s administration. Brands offers new insights into Reagan’s remote management style and fractious West Wing staff, his deft handling of public sentiment to transform the tax code, his deeply misunderstood relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the ways in which he shut down the age of liberalism and ushered in the age of Reagan, whose defining principles are still powerfully felt today.

Doris Kearns Goodwin says of Brands’ Reagan: The Life: “A superb biographer writing at the top of his game has found the perfect subject for his narrative skills and profound understanding of the American presidency. Over the years H. W. Brands has produced an extraordinary body of historical and biographical works. This is his masterpiece.”