The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s
Doug Rossinow
Abstract
This book looks at the full measure of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the ideology of Reaganism. Believers in libertarian economics and a muscular foreign policy, Reaganite conservatives in the 1980s achieved impressive success in their efforts to transform American government, politics, and society, ushering in the political and social system Americans inhabit today. The book links current trends in economic inequality to the policies and social developments of the Reagan era. It reckons with the racial politics of Reaganism and its debt to the backlash generated by the civil rights movement, ... More
This book looks at the full measure of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the ideology of Reaganism. Believers in libertarian economics and a muscular foreign policy, Reaganite conservatives in the 1980s achieved impressive success in their efforts to transform American government, politics, and society, ushering in the political and social system Americans inhabit today. The book links current trends in economic inequality to the policies and social developments of the Reagan era. It reckons with the racial politics of Reaganism and its debt to the backlash generated by the civil rights movement, as well as Reaganism’s entanglement with the politics of crime and the rise of mass incarceration. The book narrates the conflicts that rocked U.S. foreign policy toward Central America, and it explains the role of the recession during the early 1980s in the decline of manufacturing and the growth of a service economy.
Keywords:
Ronald Reagan,
Reaganism,
libertarian economics,
Reaganite conservatives,
American government,
Reagan era,
U.S. foreign policy
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780231169882 |
Published to Columbia Scholarship Online: November 2015 |
DOI:10.7312/columbia/9780231169882.001.0001 |