A new biography of Ronald Reagan will hit bookstore shelves later this year.
W.W. Norton will publish journalist and historian Max Boot’s Reagan: His Life and Legend latethis summer, the press announced in a news release. The press describes the book as a “gripping and profoundly revisionist biography.”
Reagan, the Republican who went from movie actor to governor of California before being elected U.S. president in 1980, remains one of the most influential political figures in 20th-century American history. His eight years in the White House redefined American conservatism, and he is still widely admired by the Right. He died in 2004 after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
He has been the subject of numerous biographies, including Jacob Weisberg’s Ronald Reagan, Bob Spitz’s Reagan: An American Journey, and H.W. Brands’ Reagan: The Life.
Norton says that Boot’s book is “the most definitive and balanced biography to date, drawing from previously unavailable archives and new interviews (nearly 100) with Reagan’s aides and family members; many who have since passed away.”
It also says that “Boot, a one-time Republican policy advisor, offers no apologia, depicting a man with a Manichean, good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing.”
Reagan is scheduled for publication on Sept. 10.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
