Ronald Reagan was born into a different world. It was an age when imperial European powers held sway over much of the globe, and the United States had just begun to make its presence felt in international affairs. By the time he became president, Reagan’s critics on the Left would not only take aim at his physical age, but also assert that he was an intellectual lightweight—what ideas he had were relics of a bygone era. Meanwhile, those on the Right would worry about his commitment to countering the Soviet Union and his belief in the possibilities of personal diplomacy, which bedeviled so many presidents before him….

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