The Crusader
Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The inspiration for the upcoming film Reagan starring Dennis Quaid and directed by Sean McNamara
“Combining the skills of great story-telling with his commitment to scholarly detail, Paul Kengor has written an important book that also makes for a fascinating read. The Crusader will not only entertain and inform, it will change minds.” — Peter Schweizer, bestselling author of Blood Money, Red-Handed, and Reagan's War
Based on extraordinary research, The Crusader is a major reassessment of Ronald Reagan's lifelong campaign to dismantle the Soviet Empire
God and Ronald Reagan made presidential historian Paul Kengor one of the premier chroniclers of the life and career of the 40th president. With The Crusader, Kengor returns with the one book about Reagan that has not been written: The story of his lifelong crusade against communism, and of his dogged—and ultimately triumphant—effort to overthrow the Soviet Union.
Drawing upon reams of newly declassified presidential papers, as well as untapped Soviet media archives and new interviews with key players, Kengor traces Reagan's efforts to target the Soviet Union from his days as governor of California to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of what he famously dubbed the "Evil Empire." The result is a major revision and enhancement of what historians are only beginning to realize: That Reagan not only wished for the collapse of communism, but had a deep and specific understanding of what it would take––and effected dozens of policy shifts that brought the USSR to its heels within a decade of his presidency.
The Crusader makes use of key sources from behind the Iron Curtain, including one key memo that implicates a major American liberal politician in a scheme to enlist Soviet premier Yuri Andropov to help defeat Reagan's 1984 reelection bid. Such finds make The Crusader not just a work of extraordinary history, but a work of explosive revelation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this hagiographic account, political scientist Kengor (God and Ronald Reagan) makes the familiar case (made most recently by John Lewis Gaddis in The Cold War) that Reagan played a decisive role in ending the Cold War. Reagan was troubled by communism well before he arrived at the White House. As a young man in Hollywood, he railed against the red threat, and as early as 1967, he called for the destruction of the Berlin Wall. As president, Reagan engaged in "economic warfare," invaded Grenada and proved that the Soviets couldn't win an arms race against the U.S. Though "those enslaved by the Soviet Communist state" didn't find freedom until after the Reagan administration, Dutch gets the credit. And what of other major figures who contributed to the Cold War's end? Gorbachev, of course, figures prominently, and John Paul II makes significant appearances Kengor credits the pope with helping turn Reagan's attention to Poland. Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, emerges as a sneak and a dupe, willing to undermine U.S. foreign policy and make nice with the Russians. The book's structure is somewhat stilted each chapter is broken up into short chunks, so it feels as though one is reading not a sweeping narrative, but an annotated time line of Reagan's presidency. While the book is workmanlike, the chronology is useful and the footnotes reveal an impressive amount of research.
Customer Reviews
Not even worth a star rating...
This is nothing more than a re-hashing of his first book, which was a vicious butchering of history in and of itself.
This man is an absolute disgrace as an author, and should be ashamed of himself for subjecting the public to this nonsense.