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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street Americaby William Kleinknecht
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The myth of Ronald Reagan's greatness has reached epic proportions in recent years. The public rates him as one of the most popular presidents, and Republicans everywhere seek to cast themselves in his image. But award-winning journalist William Kleinknecht shows in this penetrating analysis of his presidency that the Reagan legacy has been devastating for the country — especially for the ordinary Americans he claimed to represent. So much that has gone wrong in America — including the subprime mortgage crisis and the meltdown of the financial sector — can be traced directly to Reagan's policies. The financial deregulation launched in the 1980s freed banks and securities firms to squander hundreds of billions of dollars and make a shambles of the economy. Boom-and-bust cycles, obscene CEO salaries, blackouts, drug-company scandals, collapsing bridges, plummeting wages for working people, the flight of U.S. manufacturing abroad — these are all products of Reagan's free-market zealotry and his gutting of the public sector. Reagan pioneered the use of wedge issues like race and the war on drugs to distract America while his administration empowered corporations to lay waste to our traditional ways of life. In the spirit of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Kleinknecht even take us to Reagan's hometown of Dixon, Illinois, to show that he was anything but a friend to Main Street America. Relying on detailed factual analysis rather than opinion, The Man Who Sold the World is the first major work to explode the Reagan myth. Review:"Crime writer Kleinknecht (New Ethnic Mobs) turns his attention to a different kind of organized crime in this critical reassessment of the lasting influence of Ronald Reagan's presidency — and his hand in the current economic crisis. According to the author, Reagan and his ideological fellow travelers abdicated the government's regulatory role to oversee banking, manufacturing, telecommunications, the media, mining and public welfare, leaving Americans without protection from the avarice of shortsighted corporations. While well-documented and forceful, the book has a strident tone that might put off the very people Kleinknecht tries to persuade — those who have lionized Reagan as the people's president. More crucially, the author tries to lay everything from the decline of America's image overseas to the 2008 meltdown of the global banking system at Reagan's feet, and it is often unclear whether Reagan was the mastermind or simply the figurehead behind which other agents carried out their own plans independent of the president's will. Whatever Reagan's complicity, the policies carried out in his name and under his leadership clearly changed the relationship between the American people and their government, and rarely, the author shows, for the better." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"A seasoned crime reporter of the old school, William Kleinknecht has penetrated the showbiz curtain to expose the venality and cynicism of the Reagan era — and tells us why the crimes of that time still matter so much today." Joe Conason, best-selling author, Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth and It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush Review:"Finally, a fact-filled, eminently readable book that punctures the hot air balloon that has buoyed the Reagan presidency for far too long. Kleinknecht strips the emperor's clothes from Ronald Reagan to finally reveal him for what he was, a dim bulb conservative who set the country on the road that led us to the sorry state in which we find ourselves today. A must read." Peter Biskind, best-selling author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Generation Revolutionized Hollywood Review:"Bill Kleinknecht knows that it is important to tear down false gods, which is what he does in this scathing reappraisal of Ronald Reagan. A book that will help usher in a brighter political era." Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and co-author of The New Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences Review:"Tough, well-argued criticism of a conservative icon." Kirkus Reviews Synopsis:An award-winning journalist shatters the myth of Ronald Reagan About the AuthorWilliam Kleinknecht is a veteran crime correspondent for the Newark Star-Ledger. He previously covered the crime beat for the New York Daily News. The winner of awards from the Associated Press and the American Society of Professional Journalists, he has contributed to American Journalism Review, National Law Journal, and the Boston Phoenix. The author of New Ethnic Mobs: The Changing Face of Organized Crime in America, he lives in Glen Rock, New Jersey. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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