The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order

The Age of Reagan brings to life the tumultuous decade and a half that preceded Ronald Reagan’s ascent to the White House. Drawing on scores of interviews and years of research, Steven F. Hayward takes us on an engrossing journey through the most politically divisive years the United States has had to endure since the decade before the Civil War.

Hayward captures an America at war with itself—and an era whose reverberations we feel to this very day. He brings new insight into the profound failure of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the oddly liberal nature of Richard Nixon’s administration, the significance of Reagan’s years as California’s governor, the sudden-death drama of his near defeat of Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican primary, the listlessness of Jimmy Carter’s leadership, and the political earthquake that was Reagan’s victorious presidential campaign in 1980.

Provocative, authoritative, and majestic in scope, The Age of Reagan is an unforgettable account of the rebirth and triumph of the American spirit.

Steven F. Hayward is a recognized authority on both Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, having written The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964–1980, and Churchill on Leadership. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle, National Review, Reason, and Policy Review, among other publications. A Ph.D. in American studies, he is F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. Hayward is currently at work on The Age of Reagan: Lion at the Gate, 1980–1989, to be published by Crown Forum in 2006. He divides his time between Washington, D.C., and California.