This book examines how Ronald Reagan’s electrifying 1964 televised speech, “A Time For Choosing,” ignited the conservative movement within the GOP. Ronald Reagan’s televised speech, or what many conservatives today simply call “The Speech,” was a call for action, telling Americans that now was “A Time for Choosing.” “The Speech” catapulted Reagan into national politics, the California governorship, and ultimately the presidency. The themes of the speech, including anti-Communism, strong national defense, and the need to protect the average American from taxes and bureaucracy, ignited the conservative movement in the GOP, resulting over time in the sidelining of the more liberal, establishment wing of the Republican Party. The contributors in this edited volume show how Ronald Reagan’s “coming out” speech on the national stage helped set the political agenda for the next three decades.

On the hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth comes the twentieth-anniversary edition of Peggy Noonan’s critically acclaimed bestseller What I Saw at the Revolution, for which she provides a new Preface that demonstrates this book’s timeless relevance. As a special assistant to the president, Noonan worked with Ronald Reagan—and with Vice President George H. W. Bush—on some of their most memorable speeches. Noonan shows us the world behind the words, and her sharp, vivid portraits of President Reagan and a host of Washington’s movers and shakers are rendered in inimitable, witty prose. Her priceless account of what it was like to be a speechwriter among bureaucrats, and a woman in the last bastion of male power, makes this a Washington memoir that breaks the mold—as spirited, sensitive, and thoughtful as Peggy Noonan herself.

It’s About Time. America has been craving leadership—and at last a gun-slinging, mega-rock star, deerslayer, and patriot has stepped forward to provide it. Make way for Ted Nugent. Cocked, locked, and ready to rock, the Motor City Madman, the thinking man’s Abraham Lincoln, has unleashed the ultimate high-octane political manifesto for the ages in Ted, White, and Blue—the most important patriotic statement since the Constitution. In Ted, White, and Blue you’ll discover: Why war is the answer to so many of our current problems Why if Ted were a Mexican, he’d start a revolution (and how, since he’s not, we can control our own borders) How to put Uncle Sam on a diet (a waste-watchers program for government) If you care about America, if you want to preserve, protect, and defend the land of the free and the home of the brave, if you’re fed up with lazy, whining, fear mongering, government-gorging Obamaniacs, then you need to read Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto.

"They called it the Reagan revolution," Ronald Reagan noted in his Farewell Address. "Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense." Nearly two decades after that 1989 speech, debate continues to rage over just how revolutionary those Reagan years were. The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction identifies and tackles some of the controversies and historical mysteries that continue to swirl around Reagan and his legacy, while providing an illuminating look at some of the era's defining personalities, ideas, and accomplishments. Gil Troy, a well-known historian who is a frequent commentator on contemporary politics, sheds much light on the phenomenon known as the Reagan Revolution, situating the reception of Reagan's actions within the contemporary liberal and conservative political scene. While most conservatives refuse to countenance any criticism of their hero, an articulate minority laments that he did not go far enough. And while some liberals continue to mourn just how far he went in changing America, others continue to mock him as a disengaged, do-nothing dunce. Nevertheless, as Troy shows, two and a half decades after Reagan's 1981 inauguration, his legacy continues to shape American politics, diplomacy, culture, and economics. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush modeled much of their presidential leadership styles on Reagan's example, while many of the debates of the '80s about the budget, tax cutting, defense-spending, and American values still rage. Love him or hate him, Ronald Reagan remains the most influential president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and one of the most controversial. This marvelous book places the Reagan Revolution in the broader context of postwar politics, highlighting the legacies of these years on subsequent presidents and on American life today. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

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.