The Reagan range

The Presidency of Ronald Reagan is now history, and obviously much has been written about this remarkable political personage. The literature on Reagan ranges from historical accounts and journalistic interpretations to memoirs and kiss-and-tell revelations. Astonishingly, however, little has been done linking Reagan to the American popular culture that spawned and trained him and which he intuitively understood and used so well. This book is an attempt to make sense out of Reagan by linking him to various grassroots dimensions of American popular mythology and mind. The argument is made that Reagan's political success can be understood in part by seeing him as part of the revivified nostalgic myth that so informs and shapes American political life, of which he was the latest successful representative.^

By looking at Reagan as a nostalgic representation, we then gain insight into our desire to link the American past with the present and understand more fully what the mythic past, and its current political representation, means to us. Reagan meant something deeper to us as a people than merely a political ideology and an agenda, and it is the burden of this book to attempt illumination of that meaning. If the reader can take away from it deeper understanding of both Reagan and the America he proclaimed, then she or he can gain access to the warp and woof of popular knowledge, the true subject of the book, and the real source of Reagan's appeal. The book ranges over the images and institutions of Reagan country: the town, the family, the business, the church, and throughout the personality who represented these nostalgic formations to us.^

It attempts to utilize a variety of sources from American and popular culture studies, works on Reagan, and popular materials such as movies to offer an interpretation of Reagan as an exemplar of the political relevance and power of popular culture. Although it does not ignore the material and circumstantial aspects of the rise of Reagan, essentially the book deals with a popular country of the mind.