By the end of the 1980s, many Americans looked at the state of the nation with a renewed optimism, which was personified by an enduring American president - Ronald Wilson Reagan. The essays in this volume revisit the 1980s in order to examine the factors that contributed to his political and cultural triumphs and assess his legacy.

"The essays in this splendid collection offer a nuanced, up-to-date understanding not only of Ronald Reagan but also of larger social, economic, and political trends of the 1980s - and of their legacies." - James T. Patterson, author of Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore