Max Boot’s biography Reagan — His Life and Legend will have an importance beyond its worth because its author, once a Republican in good standing, is now a prominent member of the anti-Trump intelligentsia. As a result, Boot, more than an average historian, betrays an agenda.
We get a hint of Boot’s ulterior motive in the front matter with a quote from Sherwood Anderson, a now obscure novelist and short story writer, “All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built.” Tellingly, one of Anderson’s first efforts at writing was a book titled, Why I am a Socialist. He quickly destroyed the socialist manifesto he penned just after divorcing his first wife and leaving their three children behind. He would eventually marry three more times in his rebellious quest for personal freedom against a repressive system.
The “wall of misunderstanding” here is one of Boot’s own construction.
Boot works chronologically, breaking his effort into five “acts” befitting of Reagan the actor, covering childhood, Hollywood, his increasing activism leading to his time as California governor, the presidency, and the twilight years after his two terms in the White House.
Boot is at his best illuminating Reagan’s pre-political life, noting that in Reagan’s life, “one constant remained: the values he learned growing up in the Midwest. Values like do your best, work hard, follow the rules, be friendly, stay humble, tell the truth, put family first, respect your elders. It was meat-and-potatoes morality for a seemingly meat-and-potatoes
