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 enlarge | Author: Sean Wilentz
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $13.35
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 6544
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.6
ISBN: 0060744804
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.927
EAN: 9780060744809
ASIN: 0060744804
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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Condition: Brand New!!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Don't bother...it's predictable August 13, 2008
3 out of 23 found this review helpful
If you are looking for an objective history of the Reagan Administration, look elsewhere. This guy lists himself as a Pulitzer finalist...well, I hope hope he doesn't expect to win anytime soon. Politically, he's a teacher at Princeton -- enough said. The book is predictable, almost elementary.
In the introduction, Wilentz brags that he didn't conduct any interviews because it would have taken too much time. The end result is as expected. Ronald Reagan is the bogeyman. The most popular president of my lifetime only gets credit for Iran-Contra. Meanwhile, Wilentz's beloved Democrats manage to overcome despite Ronald Reagan. It reminds me of the old New York City party joke: How did Reagan win? no one I know voted for him. I suspect none of Wilentz' friends voted for him either.
Wilentz is entitled to his opinion, But please don't pass it off as fact.
Then there'd the writing. I was taught that adjectives were cheap. Well, Wilentz is the master if the ham-handed adjective. Every Republican is "mean-spirited" while every Democrats is courageous or (at the time) misunderstood.
If you are looking for a predictable "Princeton" editorial of the Reagan Era era, this the book for you. If you want to be enlightened and learn something, I suggest look elsewhere.
Don't' buy this book, you can have mine-- not that I want I want the dis-information to spread. Wilentz doesn't want to waste his energy conducting interviews -- don't waste your energy reading it.
Waste of Time and Money August 10, 2008
6 out of 25 found this review helpful
Sean Wilentz is an awoved Marxist with a long track record of writing tendentious leftist history -all hailed as magisterial by his fellow leftist academics. For anyone willing to do their own reading and be their own critic, the bias and political agenda in his work is plain to see.
Take a few minutes, if you can, before buying this one to read the preface. The outrageously absurd comments on President Bush and the Republican Party generally tell you all you need to know about Wilentz's perspective, his political agenda and his reasons for writing this book - and his competence as well. Anyone who seriously believes the nonsense he spouts there shouldn't be writing history - he shows a total lack of the ability to read objectively, weigh sources and penetrate beneath the slogans to the reality.
If you really want to understand Reagan, try something by Steve Hayward.
Biased vitriol as history August 9, 2008
15 out of 31 found this review helpful
In "The Age of Reagan" by Sean Wilentz, an ultra-liberal professor and commentator for the liberal magazine, "The New Republic" one can see that Wilentz grudgingly admires aspects of Ronald Reagan's presidency. He admits in his introduction that he is "...sharply critical of Reagan's leadership..." but that "...Reagan and his presidency were so important that they deserve more scholarly attention than they have received." So, Wilentz sets off to give Reagan, and the years from 1974 to 2008, some serious attention, but not the sort that Reagan, or his many admirers, would much appreciate.
First of all, Wilentz's bias is hard to miss. Every conservative is either "extremist," "hard-line," or "ultra." Republicans are described as "hotspurs," "right-wing," or "hard right." Liberal Democrats are just regular folks, of course. It got rather tiring fairly quickly. Anytime a pejorative adjective was used in the book, supposedly a history, the reader would immediately know that Wilentz was about to name a Republican. I almost wore out my pen underlining the instances.
One of Wilentz's worst non sequiturs appeared in a chapter on President George W. Bush when he links global warming warnings to hurricane Katrina, "Bush, who had long ignored scientists' warnings about the meteorological effects of global warming, sloughed off warnings from the Director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit." Wilentz, a non-scientist, appears to be ignorant of the fact that most weather scientists say global warming actually weakens hurricanes because of greater wind shear that tears the storms apart as they approach North America.
After slogging through more than 450 pages of left wing invective, the reader comes to a small acknowledgement of the positive achievements of Ronald Reagan, "The age of Reagan had by then lasted longer than most other such periods in our political history... If it fell far short of eradicating Franklin Roosevelt's revolution in government or the reforms of the 1960s, it dramatically changed the sum and substance of American politics. It also hastened the downfall of the Soviet empire through Reagan's diplomatic engagement with Mikhail Gorbachev, without a single nuclear weapon being fired in anger." Note, that even in this last acknowledgement, Wilentz attributes the "hastened the downfall of the Soviet empire" through "diplomatic engagement" not the military buildup which he, as a liberal, no doubt opposed strenuously.
Reviewer: Chuck DeVore is a California State Assemblyman, he served as a Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Department of Defense from 1986 to 1988, retired from the Army National Guard as a lieutenant colonel, and is the co-author of "China Attacks."
Revisionist August 9, 2008
10 out of 26 found this review helpful
Until I read this dribble, I was under the impression that the Carter Presidency was one of the worst in American History, and I thought President Clinton was held in contempt. I never knew the the downfall of communism was brought about by President Carter along with his leadership in directing the amazing economy we experienced during his term. More of the amazing leadership is described about the Clinton leadership.
According to the author, Reagan was simply lucky to become President, and he really did not have anything positive to contribute to the American Republic or the world at large.
The author should be ashamed of this literary effort.
I place every book I have ever read in my library. For the first time in 55 years, I was moved to throw this diatribe in the recycle bin. I did not want it to go into the trash to take up space. I thought it best to send it somewhere where the paper could do something more meaningful in the future.
 Interesting but deeply flawed view of the conservative movement July 31, 2008
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
I will say first of all that I respect Sean Willitz for taking on a thankless task. He would be seen as either a Reagan apologist by the left or some ivory tower liberal by the right for trying to write a history of the past 35 years. I think he does a decent job of focusing on the recent past, starting with Watergate, but comes up short in focusing on what the common themes were and what truly mattered.
I would describe this book as a mile wide and an inch deep. Willitz does hit all of the high notes, such as the Iran Embassy siege, the weapons deal in the 80s, Clinton's impeachment, the government shutdown, gulf war, 9/11 etc. Yet he falters because he provides no context regarding how any of these events shaped American policy, which we obviously know they did. Rather this book is like visiting Paris and only seeing the Mona Lisa, Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame while eating at McDonalds.
Like I said I would give him an A for effort but what ended up being produced was far less interesting.
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