REAGAN
A critical examination of Ronald Reagan's presidency as deliberate demolition of the New Deal and Great Society through trickle-down economics that never trickled.
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Chapters
17 total- 01Prologue
- 02Chapter One - The Boy from Tampico
- 03Chapter Two - Hollywood’s Favorite Nobody
- 04Chapter Three - Red Scare, White Teeth
- 05Chapter Four - Polishing the Pitchman
- 06Chapter Five - Mr. California
- 07Chapter Six - The Speech That Sold a Revolution
- 08Chapter Seven - Morning in the Machine
- 09Chapter Eight - The Great Undoing
- 10Chapter Nine - The Coldest Warrior
- 11Chapter Ten - The Lie That Killed
- 12Chapter Eleven - The War on the Poor
- 13Chapter Twelve - The Crack and the Cage
- 14Chapter Thirteen - The Sandinista Shuffle
- 15Chapter Fourteen - The Church of Reagan
- 16Chapter Fifteen - The Legacy That Ate Its Father
- 17Chapter Sixteen - The Reboot
Edition notes and short pages
REAGAN
REAGAN
The Actor Who Played President
by James Johnson
Dedication
For everyone who was told to smile while the country burned behind them.
And for the ones who remembered what actually happened.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TO THE HISTORIANS who kept the receipts.
To the activists who wouldn’t shut up.
To the families who lost someone while the country looked away.
And to every poor, queer, Black, Brown, or sick American who lived through the smile and saw the teeth behind it.
This book is yours.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JJ WRITES THE biographies they don’t want you to read.
The ones that name names, crack myths, and torch the polite version of history.
He’s authored hundreds of books, each one a crowbar in the archive.
You can find him where the records got sealed, the bodies got buried, or the truth got rebranded.
COPYRIGHT
© 2025 JAMES JOHNSON. All rights reserved.
This is a work of nonfiction. Every fact presented is supported by historical record, media archive, policy document, or direct quotation. If it sounds outrageous, that’s because it was. If it sounds made up, check the footnotes. If you’re offended, read it again.
Names, dates, and events are real. The only thing exaggerated is how long it took to tell the truth.
Printed in the United States of Amnesia.