Selling Ronald Reagan: The Emergence of a President

Gerard DeGroot

I.B.Tauris, Sep 23, 2015 - Biography & Autobiography - 320 pages

How did Ronald Reagan go from being a washed-up Hollywood actor to the most powerful man in America? Running as a ‘celebrity’ candidate for the governorship of California in 1966, Ronald Reagan’s hard-line republican campaign was faltering amongst the student riots in Berkeley and sixties counter-culture. Reagan’s team, young. Hungry and inventive, including two Stanford psychologists, coached Reagan – teaching him to avoid getting caught up in policy detail and to refocus attention towards his natural ease in front of the camera and media-friendly charisma. In doing so Reagan and his team created the first 'modern' politician. With an emphasis on the importance of the sound-bite, the photo-op and Reagan’s personality, they won the California governorship by a landslide, and went on to do the same in the US presidential elections. This is the untold story of Reagan’s California campaign, which was to change the face of American politics, and sheds new light on one of the titans of modern American history.

About the author

Gerard DeGroot was born in California and is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He has published fourteen books and dozens of articles on various aspects of twentieth-century history. His book on nuclear weaponry (The Bomb: A Life) was published to considerable acclaim and won the Westminster Medal for Military Literature. The Sixties Unplugged, an iconoclastic history of the decade, won the Ray and Pat Browne Prize in 2008 for the best book on American cultural history. DeGroot is also a freelance journalist, contributing frequent op-ed columns and reviews to national newspapers in Britain and the USA.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Selling Ronald Reagan: The Emergence of a President
• Author: Gerard DeGroot
• Publisher: I.B.Tauris, 2015
• ISBN: 0857729306, 9780857729309
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical; Biography & Autobiography / Presidents & Heads of State; History / Modern / 20th Century; History / United States / 20th Century; Political Science / American Government / General; Political Science / Peace; Political Science / Political Process / Campaigns & Elections; Political Science / Political Process / General; Political Science / Political Process / Leadership; Technology & Engineering / Military Science