Contemporary Authors

• Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All Nelson Current (Nashville, TN), 2005
• Secrets of Videoblogging Peachpit (Berkeley, CA), 2006
• Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America ISI Books (Wilmington, DE), 2009
• December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World Nelson Books (Nashville, TN), 2011
• Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan Nelson Books (Nashville, TN), 2015
• Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980 Broadside Books (New York, NY), 2017
• Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative Nelson Books (Nashville, TN), 2017

1. Citizen Newt : the making of a Reagan conservative LCCN 2017933630 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig, author. Main title Citizen Newt : the making of a Reagan conservative / Craig Shirley. Published/Produced Nashville, TN : Nelson Books, [2017] ©2017 Description xxv, 544 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9781595554482 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER E840.8.G5 S45 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Reagan rising : the decisive years, 1976-1980 LCCN 2016048355 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig, author. Main title Reagan rising : the decisive years, 1976-1980 / Craig Shirley. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York, NY : Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2017]. Description xvii, 409 pages : illustration ; 24 cm ISBN 9780062456557 (hc : alk. paper) CALL NUMBER E877 .S55 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 3. Last act : the final years and emerging legacy of Ronald Reagan LCCN 2015002184 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig, author. Main title Last act : the final years and emerging legacy of Ronald Reagan / Craig Shirley. Published/Produced Nashville, Tennessee : Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson, [2015] Description xxxiii, 408 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9781595555342 (cloth) Links Cover image /media.zondervan.com/images/product/original/9781595555342.JPG Shelf Location FLM2015 208979 CALL NUMBER E877.2 .S55 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) Shelf Location FLM2016 009780 CALL NUMBER E877.2 .S55 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 4. December 1941 : 31 days that changed America and saved the world LCCN 2014412363 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig. Main title December 1941 : 31 days that changed America and saved the world / Craig Shirley. Published/Produced Nashville, Tennessee : Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson, [2013] Description xvi, 672 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm ISBN 9781595555823 (trade paperback) Shelf Location FLM2014 167465 CALL NUMBER D769 .S54 2013 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM1) 5. December 1941 : 31 days that changed America and saved the world LCCN 2011940099 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig. Main title December 1941 : 31 days that changed America and saved the world / Craig Shirley. Published/Created Nashville, Tenn. : Thomas Nelson, c2011. Description x, 645 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm. ISBN 9781595554574 CALL NUMBER D769 .S54 2011 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER D769 .S54 2011 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 6. Rendezvous with destiny : Ronald Reagan and the campaign that changed America LCCN 2010020123 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig. Main title Rendezvous with destiny : Ronald Reagan and the campaign that changed America / Craig Shirley. Published/Created Wilmington, Del. : ISI Books, c2010. Description xii, 740 p. : photographs ; 23 cm. ISBN 9781935191933 Shelf Location FLM2015 062751 CALL NUMBER E875 .S46 2010 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 7. Rendezvous with destiny : Ronald Reagan and the campaign that changed America LCCN 2009029922 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig. Main title Rendezvous with destiny : Ronald Reagan and the campaign that changed America / Craig Shirley. Published/Created Wilmington, Del. : ISI Books, c2009. Description xii, 740 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 9781933859552 (cloth bound : alk. paper) 1933859555 (cloth bound : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2015 068369 CALL NUMBER E875 .S46 2009 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) Shelf Location FLM2015 062750 CALL NUMBER E875 .S46 2009 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 8. Secrets of videoblogging LCCN 2007295699 Type of material Book Personal name Verdi, Michael. Main title Secrets of videoblogging / Michael Verdi, Ryanne Hodson ; with Diana Weynand and Shirley Craig. Published/Created Berkeley, Calif. : Peachpit, c2006. Description viii, 200 p. : col. ill. ; 23 cm. ISBN 0321429176 (pbk.) 9780321429179 (pbk.) Links Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0707/2007295699.html CALL NUMBER TK5105.8884 .V47 2006 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 9. Reagan's revolution : the untold story of the campaign that started it all LCCN 2004026809 Type of material Book Personal name Shirley, Craig. Main title Reagan's revolution : the untold story of the campaign that started it all / Craig Shirley. Published/Created Nashville, Tenn. : Nelson Current, c2005. Description xxx, 417 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. ISBN 0785260498 Links Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip054/2004026809.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0617/2004026809-d.html Shelf Location FLM2015 068459 CALL NUMBER E868 .S46 2005 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) Shelf Location FLM2015 070280 CALL NUMBER E868 .S46 2005 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

• Craig Shirley - http://www.craigshirley.com/about-craig-shirley/

  ABOUT CRAIG SHIRLEY

  Craig Shirley is the author of four bestsellers on former U.S. president Ronald Reagan –Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (2014), Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All (2005), Last Act: The Final Years and emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (2015), and Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980 (2017). His book December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World (2011) appeared multiple times on the New York Times bestselling list in December 2011 and January 2012, while Last Act was named best narrative in the non-fiction category by USA Book News for 2015. Craig is the founder of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, was chosen in 2005 by Springfield College as their Outstanding Alumnus, and has been named the First Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater, where he taught a course titled “Reagan 101.”

  His books have been hailed as the definitive works on the Gipper’s campaigns of 1976 and 1980. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch , Eureka College Board of Trustees and has lectured at the Reagan Library, the FDR Library in Hyde Park, and the Dole Institute in Kansas. The London Telegraph called Shirley as “the best of the Reagan biographers.”

  Shirley, a widely sought after speaker and commentator, appears regularly on many network and cable shows including NewsMaxTV, FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, ABC. CBS, CNBC, C-SPAN and others. He has also written extensively for the Washington Post, NewsMax, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Town Hall, the Weekly Standard, Politico, Reuters, Lifezette and many other publications. He successfully predicted the results of the 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections.

  Craig Shirley also edited the book Coaching Youth Lacrosse for the Lacrosse Foundation. He was also the founder of the Ft. Hunt Youth Lacrosse League and coached there for 14 years with an overall record of 119 wins, 21 losses and 4 ties.

  Craig Shirley has completed another books, Citizen Newt about the revolutionary life and times of Newt Gingrich. His future plans include work on three more books on Reagan including a detailed look at his 1968 run for the presidency. He is also writing a book about Dr. Howard Snyder, personal physician to President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as a book about George Washington’s family.

  Shirley and his wife, Zorine reside at “Trickle Down Point” on the Rappahannock River in Lancaster, Virginia and at Ben Lomond, an historic Georgian-style home in Tappahannock, Virginia. They are parents of four children, Matthew, Andrew, Taylor, and Mitchell. His varied interests include sailing, waterskiing, sport shooting, renovating buildings, and scuba diving. An accomplished carpenter, he has built two houses. Craig Shirley is also a member of the Reagan Alumni Association, Friends of Friendship Fire House, the Lyn Nofziger Society, Philadelphia Society, the Fusionist Society and a former board member of the American Conservative Union. He was a decorated contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shirley

  Craig Shirley
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Craig Shirley
  Craig Shirley by Gage Skidmore.jpg
  Born Craigan Paul Shirley
  September 24, 1956 (age 61)
  Syracuse, New York, United States
  Nationality American
  Alma mater Springfield College
  Occupation Reagan biographer and historian
  Spouse(s) Zorine Shirley
  Children 3 sons, 1 daughter
  Website www.craigshirley.com
  Craig Shirley (born September 24, 1956) is an American author, lecturer, historian and public affairs consultant. He has written four bestsellers on Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (2014), Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All (2005), and Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (2015), and Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980 (2017). He is also the author of Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative (2017), the only authorized biography of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's early career.

  Shirley also wrote December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World, a New York Times bestseller published in December 2011 about the attack on Pearl Harbor and its effects on the American people and culture.[1] Most books have gone to paperback. Documentaries have been produced based in part on the 1976 Reagan campaign and December 1941, for the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

  Born and raised in Syracuse, New York, Shirley earned a degree in History and Political Science from Springfield College. Shirley was named by the London Telegraph, "the best of the Reagan biographers" [2] and writer Tony Lee of Breitbart said he was “one of the most esteemed Ronald Reagan biographers."[3] Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard called him "a prominent biographer of Ronald Reagan,"[4] Mark Levin called him "one of the best of the Reagan biographers,"[5] and the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, said Shirley is a "noted Ronald Reagan biographer.”[6] Laura Ingraham has often noted Shirley's authority as a Reagan scholar, and writer Jarrett Stepman called Shirley a "noted Ronald Reagan historian,"[7] and author Romesh Ratnesar noted in a review in the New York Times that Shirley “is a sure-footed and entertaining observer of the hurly-burly of national politics.”[8]

  His third book on Reagan’s final years, Last Act, the topic which had never been covered before, was also highly praised for its rich writing and intricate detail and research.

  Shirley has also written dozens of articles and given dozens of lectures about the life and times and lessons of Ronald Reagan.

  Contents [hide]
  1 Life and career
  1.1 Youth and education
  1.2 Career
  1.3 Writing career
  2 Achievements and awards
  2.1 Recognition
  2.2 Op-eds and media appearances
  2.3 Personal life
  2.4 Activism
  2.5 Lacrosse
  2.6 Books
  3 References
  4 External links
  Life and career[edit]
  Youth and education[edit]
  Shirley is the second son of Edward Bruce Shirley and Barbara Cone Shirley. He is of English and Scottish descent. His parents were charter members of the New York State Conservative Party and his father was the first registered conservative voter in the Empire State.[9] In 1964 he went door to door for presidential candidate Barry Goldwater at age 8.[10] In high school, Shirley was a standout athlete, winning six varsity letters, winning the league pole vaulting championship and was named “Most Improved Athlete” his senior year.[11] He was also the editor of his high school newspaper.

  In 1978 Shirley graduated from Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he majored history and political science. He was also a member of the school’s lacrosse team and track team.

  Career[edit]
  Craig Shirley was professionally involved in American politics and government for over three decades. He worked in government and on campaigns at the congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential levels but now spend his time writing and lecturing on presidential politics and American history.

  In 1977, he interned in the Capitol Hill office of Senator Jacob Javits of New York. That fall, he worked on the successful election campaign of John N. Dalton for governor of Virginia.[12]

  In the fall of 1978, Shirley was press secretary for Gordon Humphrey,[13] who scored a huge upset win in the U.S. Senate election in New Hampshire. Shirley then served on Humphrey's Washington D.C. staff. Ronald Reagan came into New Hampshire to campaign for Humphrey, where Shirley first met Governor Reagan.[14]

  In 1980, he ran an important independent expenditure campaign is support of former California governor Ronald Reagan’s presidential bid in the first six primary states on behalf of the Fund for a Conservative Majority. Shirley produced and placed radio and newspaper ads in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and three other states maximizing the three quarters of a million dollars FCM budgeted for the campaign to help Reagan at a time when his own campaign was broke.[15]

  He joined the staff of the Republican National Committee in 1982.[16] As a Communications Advisor, Shirley traveled across the country advising dozens of campaigns and state committees on public relations, political advertising, and campaign strategy to co-ordinate with the message of the Reagan White House.

  In 1984, during the U.S. presidential campaign, Shirley was the Director of Communications for the National Conservative Political Action Committee, America’s largest independent political committee, which spent over $14 million on behalf of President Ronald Reagan’s re-election on another independent expenditure campaign.[17] In 1986, he became a consultant to the Fund for America’s Future, the political action committee of Vice President George H. W. Bush, working closely with the future President George W. Bush. Shirley was retained and tasked with the goal of organizing conservative support for George H. W. Bush’s 1988 presidential bid.[18]

  After Reagan’s reelection and in the late fall of 1984, Shirley opened his own firm[19] and worked on numerous matters in co-ordination with the Reagan White House including aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, support for the Strategic Defensive Initiative, support for the Afghanistan Mujahideen, support for Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, and support for the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He also worked on the White House Conference on Small Business in 1985.

  In 1991, Shirley ran a major advertising and public affairs campaign supporting President Bush and Operation Desert Storm, later represented the Embassy of the State of Kuwait, and was placed in charge of public relations for an international conference on democracy hosted in Prague by President Václav Havel of then Czechoslovakia. For a short time, Shirley and David Keene partnered in a firm, but that association ended amicably in 1992.[20]

  In 1994, Shirley organized a successful grassroots campaign to stop the "Clinton Crime Bill" on behalf of a host of clients, including the National Rifle Association. The collapse of the "Clinton Crime Bill" led directly to the historic GOP takeover of Congress later that year.

  During the 1990’s, Shirley conceived and created Citizens for State Power, which represented small investor owned utilities and they successfully stopped the attempts by Enron to nationalize the electricity grid.[21] Shirley also advised the Southeastern Legal Foundation to file suit against the Clinton Administration’s attempt to politicize the census. The case went to the Supreme Court and there the SLF prevailed, defeating Clinton in an historic 5–4 vote. Shirley pioneered the "New Media"—and indeed coined the very phrase—of talk radio, faxes, e-mail and later the internet to mobilize for politics and policy. He has also coined the term "Vichy Republicans" and "Police State Republicans."

  Shirley led a team of Reagan historians and Reagan White House veterans to challenge the veracity and truthfulness of Bill O'Reilly's book, Killing Reagan. In coordination with various Reagan institutes, Shirley also forced the cancellation of auction of Reagan's blood and the turning over of the vial to the Reagan Foundation. [22] He later contributed to the cancellation of Will Ferrell's comedy about Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's.[23][24] He also consults occasionally for the Reagan Library on special projects and campaign-related exhibits.

  In addition to working with a host of political, corporate, and trade concerns, he also served as an informal advisor to the 1996 campaign of Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole. In 2000, his firm provided in-kind support to the presidential campaign of then Governor George W. Bush as well as the Florida recount. In that same year, Craig Shirley & Associates became Shirley & Banister Public Affairs with the promotion of Diana Banister from vice president to partner [25] and finally, president of the firm in 2015.[26]

  Through his writings, he has popularized the philosophy of "Localism," and indeed coined the phrase, a 21st-century version of Federalism.

  Shirley was also a decorated contract agent for the CIA. [27]

  Writing career[edit]
  Shirley is now working on three more books on Reagan[28] including a detailed look at his 1968 run for the presidency.[29] He is also writing a book about Dr. Howard Snyder, personal physician to President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as a book about George Washington’s family. He additionally plans to write the sequel to Citizen Newt, about Newt Gingrich's years as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He is also working on a book about Harry S. Truman and a book about James Monroe.

  Achievements and awards[edit]
  Recognition[edit]
  Shirley is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch[30] and has often lectured at the Reagan Library.[31]

  He is also a member of the Reagan Alumni Association. He has addressed the Friends of Ronald Reagan association in Los Angeles and occasionally consults for the Reagan Library, especially on campaign displays and political history.

  He was chosen in 2005 by Springfield College as their Outstanding Alumnus[32] and has been named the Visiting Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan's alma mater. He taught a week long class, "Reagan 101" at Eureka College in 2012.[33]

  He was also appointed as a Trustee of Eureka.[34]

  His writings have solved some of the mysteries of Washington and politics including the stolen Carter Briefing Books in 1980,[35] the missing cornerstone to the U.S. Capitol [36] and the real story about the night of the Watergate breakin,[37] to name just a few. He also uncovered a Top Secret memo written by the Office of Naval Intelligence on December 4, 1941, putting information on the possible attack at Pearl Harbor inside the Roosevelt White House, three days before the attack.[38]

  His book December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World (2011), was nominated for 2011 Book of the Year Award by Foreword Reviews magazine.[39] His book, Last Act, was named best narrative in the non-fiction category by USA Book News for 2015.[40]

  He is a member of various author’s guilds, Philadelphia Society, the Fusionist Society and the Lyn Nofziger Society. He is a former board member of the American Conservative Union.[41] He has also lectured at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library,[42] Friends of Ronald Reagan (FORR) and Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics.[43]

  He has also lectured at the Buckley Center at Yale,[44] at Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics at UVA,[45] at Georgetown University, at Hillsdale College,[46] at Regent University,[47] and other colleges and universities. He has also addressed the Ronald Reagan Lecture Series in 2017.

  Op-eds and media appearances[edit]
  Shirley is a frequent commentator on politics. He has written for publications including the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Townhall, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Examiner, Newsmax, National Review, Reuters, Investors Business Daily, Politico, Breitbart, Lifezette and many other publications. He is also frequently sought after for televised interviews on all major networks, including CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX News, MSNBC, C-SPAN, FOX Business and CNN.[48]

  Personal life[edit]
  Craig Shirley and his wife, Zorine, are the parents of four children, Matthew, Andrew, Taylor and Mitchell. They split their time between "Trickle Down Point" on the Rappahannock River in Lancaster, Virginia and "Ben Lomond," a 300-year-old Georgian manor house in Tappahannock, VA. His hobbies include sailing, writing, scuba diving, water skiing, sport shooting, and renovating old buildings.

  In 1984 while at a fundraiser on the presidential yacht Sequoia, Shirley caught actress and dancer Ginger Rogers, who’d caught her high heels on the rug on the steps of the stern of the boat. Rodgers later that night attended a state dinner at the White House hosted by her old co-star, Ronald Reagan.

  Activism[edit]
  Shirley is the acting chairman of the revived political action committee, Citizens for the Republic,[49] originally established in January 1977 by Ronald Reagan after his defeat for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination the preceding summer. On its website, Citizens for the Republic describes itself as a "national organization dedicated to revitalizing the conservative movement. Through education, grassroots organization, advocacy, and political activism...promoting the principles of limited government, maximum freedom, personal responsibility, peace through strength, and defense of the dignity of every individual".[50] The CFTR directors include former Reagan advisors and consultants, such as the honorable Ed Meese and Reagan speechwriter Mari Maseng Will.

  Lacrosse[edit]
  Shirley is the founder of the Ft. Hunt Youth Lacrosse Program, and was a coach there for 14 years.[51] In the 20 plus years since Shirley founded the program, thousands of boys and girls have enjoyed learning and playing for Ft. Hunt. Shirley was instrumental in getting the Maryland legislature to make lacrosse the state’s sport. He was also an editor of Coaching Youth Lacrosse, published by the Lacrosse Foundation.

  His coaching record was 121 wins and 19 losses when he was head coach.

  Books[edit]
  Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All (Thomas Nelson, 2005)[52]
  Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2009)[53]
  December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World (Thomas Nelson, 2011)[54]
  Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (Thomas Nelson, 2015)[55]
  Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980 (HarperCollins, 2017)
  Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative (Thomas Nelson, 2017)[56]
  References[edit]
  Jump up ^ Cowles, Gregory. "New York Times Bestsellers". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-12-25.
  Jump up ^ Stanley, Tim. "The Invisible Bridge The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein, review problematic, partisan analysis". The London Telegraph. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
  Jump up ^ Lee, Tony. "America Remains Exceptional Because Of Reagan's 'Informed' Patriots". Breitbart. Retrieved 2014-06-06.
  Jump up ^ Barnes, Fred. "Prominent Reagan Biographer Accuses Another of Plagiarism". The Weekly Standard. Retrieved 2014-08-05.
  Jump up ^ Levin, Mark. "Mark Levin calls Craig Shirley "one of the best of the Reagan biographers"". The Mark Levin Show. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
  Jump up ^ Bedard, Paul. "Reagan biographer Craig Shirley's newest could give GOP a roadmap to the White House". The Washington Examiner.
  Jump up ^ Stepman, Jarrett. "New Evidence in Plagiarism Case Against Liberal Reagan Historian Rich Perlstein". Breitbart.
  Jump up ^ Ratnesar, Romesh (2017-03-31). "How Reagan and the New Right Resuscitated the G.O.P". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-15.
  Jump up ^ "Edward Shirley Dies In Hospital". The Post-Standard. Syracuse, New York. March 12, 1977. Retrieved 2015-04-08.
  Jump up ^ Thompson, Krissah. "Meet Craig Shirley and Diana Banister, the right's pitch-perfect conservatives". The Washington Post.
  Jump up ^ "Craig Shirley; Author, Historian, Lecturer". Retrieved 2015-04-24.
  Jump up ^ Quenqua, Douglas. "Profile: Shirley helps right-wing ideals reach new heights". The PR Week.
  Jump up ^ "Ronald Reagan: A look at his life, presidency and policies with Craig Shirley". Retrieved 2015-04-26.
  Jump up ^ Shirley, Craig. "Ronald Reagan: A look at his life, presidency and policies with Craig Shirley". The Washington Post.
  Jump up ^ "A Bit of History". Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  Jump up ^ Lee, Tony. "Biographer: Reagan Fought Elite Establishment His Whole Life; Obama 'Facebook President' Who Lacks 'Understanding Of American History'". Breitbart.
  Jump up ^ Dillin, John. "Ad campaigns on behalf of candidates are rough-and-tumble". The Christian Science Monitor.
  Jump up ^ "Craig Shirley". Retrieved 2015-04-18.
  Jump up ^ "About Us". Retrieved 2015-04-26.
  Jump up ^ "Craig Shirley". Retrieved 2015-04-18.
  Jump up ^ Drinkard, Jim. "Fronts in Lobbying Edging Grass Roots". The Associated Press.
  Jump up ^ Shirley, Craig. "Don't sell Reagan's blood". Daily Caller.
  Jump up ^ Suebsaeng, Asawin (2016-04-30). "Was Will Ferrell's Reagan Comedy Really Mocking Alzheimer's?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2017-10-16.
  Jump up ^ "Ferrell, O'Reilly and the Fiction of Reagan". CNS News. 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2017-10-16.
  Jump up ^ "Banister for Shirley". Retrieved 2015-04-17.
  Jump up ^ "New titles at Shirley & Banister". Retrieved 2015-04-11.
  Jump up ^ "About Craig Shirley".
  Jump up ^ Shirley, Craig (2011). December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World. Thomas Nelson. ISBN 978-1-59555-457-4.
  Jump up ^ "Inside the Beltway: A Reagan reminder" (web). washingtontimes.com. Retrieved July 2, 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Reagan Ranch Board of Governors". Retrieved 2012-08-08.
  Jump up ^ "Lecture with author Craig SHirley" (web). craigshirley.com. Retrieved August 9, 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Lecture and Book Signing with Craig Shirley". Retrieved 2015-04-26.
  Jump up ^ "Ronald Reagan". Retrieved 2015-04-23.
  Jump up ^ "EC elects trustees, officers". Retrieved 2015-04-22.
  Jump up ^ Shirley, Craig. "New book pins 'debategate' on Democrat". Politico.
  Jump up ^ Shirley, Craig. "Romancing the Cornerstone". Townhall.
  Jump up ^ Shirley, Craig. "The Bartender's Tale: How the Watergate Burglars Got Caught". The Washington Magazine.
  Jump up ^ Goddard, Jacqui. "Pearl Harbour memo shows US warned of Japanese attack". The Telegraph.
  Jump up ^ "BOTYA 2011 Finalists In History (Adult Nonfiction)" (web). forewordreviews.com. Retrieved June 24, 2012.
  Jump up ^ "USA Book News Announces Winners And Finalists Of The 2015 USA Best Book Awards" (web). USABookNews.com. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
  Jump up ^ "Craig Shirley; Author, Historian, Lecturer". Retrieved 2015-04-24.
  Jump up ^ "Ninth Annual Roosevelt Reading Festival" (web). fdrlibrary.marist.edu. Retrieved July 2, 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Friends of the Dole Institute Private Annual Dinner With Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny" (web). doleinstitute.org. Retrieved July 2, 2012.
  Jump up ^ "William F. Buckley, Jr. Program: "Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Election, and A Time for Choosing: 50 Years Later"". Retrieved 2015-04-21.
  Jump up ^ "8th Annual American Democracy Conference Opens Thursday". Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  Jump up ^ "Freedom Library Catalog" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-04-20.
  Jump up ^ "The Ronald Reagan Symposium 2015". Retrieved 2015-08-06.
  Jump up ^ "Craig Shirley; Author, Historian, Lecturer". Retrieved 2015-04-24.
  Jump up ^ "Officers". Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  Jump up ^ "Mission". Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  Jump up ^ Hosticka, Alexis. "Fort Hunt Youth Lacrosse Celebrates 25th Year". Alexandria Gazette Packet.
  Jump up ^ Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign that Started it All. Thomas Nelson. 2010. ISBN 978-1-59555-342-3.
  Jump up ^ Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America. 2011. ISBN 978-1-935191-93-3.
  Jump up ^ December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World. Thomas Nelson. 2011. ISBN 978-1-59555-457-4.
  Jump up ^ Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan. Thomas Nelson. 2015. ISBN 978-1-59555-534-2.
  Jump up ^ Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative. Thomas Nelson. 2017. ISBN 978-1-59555-448-2.
  External links[edit]
  Biography portal
  flag New York portal
  flag New York City portal
  icon Politics portal
  Conservatism portal
  Biography on the Shirley & Banister Public Affairs website
  Personal website
  Archive of op-eds for Politico
  Archive of op-eds for Townhall.com
  Archive of op-eds for the Weekly Standard
  Appearances on C-SPAN

• Washington Examiner - http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/reagan-biographer-craig-shirley-oreillys-killing-reagan-is-a-pile-of-garbage/article/2576715

  OPINION
  Reagan biographer Craig Shirley: O'Reilly's Killing Reagan is a 'pile of garbage'
  by Myra Adams | Nov 19, 2015, 12:03 AM Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Email this article Share on LinkedIn Print this article

  "By the way, I believe he has stopped calling himself a 'historian' so I assume he will rightly now call himself a 'novelist' because he doesn't write history, that's for sure." (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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  Craig Shirley is a bestselling author who has written three books about Ronald Reagan. His newest one, "Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan," tells the story of Reagan's final years as president and his post-presidency.

  Shirley's earlier books were "Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America," which detailed Reagan's 1980 campaign, and "Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All," about Reagan's failed 1976 presidential challenge to Gerald Ford.

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  When not writing history, Craig Shirley is president of the influential government relations and marketing firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. He has lectured at the Reagan Library, is the Visiting Reagan Scholar at Eureka College and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch.

  Author's Note: Craig Shirley requested a rebuttal interview after reading my November 14 interview with Bill O'Reilly during which O'Reilly addressed some controversies swirling around his current #1 bestseller, Killing Reagan.

  Adams: In my interview with Bill O'Reilly, he describes specific circumstances when he and co-author Martin Dugard were pressured not to publish Killing Reagan. Ultimately, he says, we "did not succumb to pressure and the book came out."

  Given your status as the author of three Reagan books and your active involvement in all things Reagan, were you aware of, or were you involved in, any efforts to keep Killing Reagan from being published?

  Shirley: No, but if I knew what claptrap he was going to write, I would have fought to stop the publication. By the way, I believe he has stopped calling himself a "historian" so I assume he will rightly now call himself a "novelist" because he doesn't write history, that's for sure. That's why I work so hard to strive for accuracy, as I did in Last Act, and my other books, to get the history of Ronald Reagan correct.

  No one has ever, ever accused me of such slipshod writing as everyone has of O'Reilly.

  Adams: O'Reilly stated in our interview that Reagan is among the "top ten greatest U.S. presidents." However, O'Reilly also believes that at age 70, when a bullet almost took Reagan's life so early in his first term, it negatively impacted him both physically and mentally throughout his entire presidency. However, through sheer will and determination, Reagan persevered and went on to accomplish great things. It is upon this premise that Killing Reagan is largely based.

  To what degree is this premise flawed?

  Shirley: Only 100 percent flawed. Reagan needed time to recover, after all, he'd been shot in the chest, a lung collapsed and he lost half the blood in his body. The doctors had to move his heart to remove the bullet. After 11 days in the hospital, he went to the White House to convalesce. But while in the hospital, he wrote a long, long letter to Leonid Brezhnev and it was impressive for its detail, length and rational thinking. If Reagan was mentally incapacitated, could he have done this?

  In fact, hours after the surgery, he was giving orders and directives. The temporary transfer of authority to Vice President George Bush was never invoked as prescribed by the 27th Amendment. For eight years, Reagan kept a diary (even recovering from the assassination), interacted with hundreds of White House staffers, went toe to toe with Gorbachev, besting him each time, wrote letters and behaved and performed always as a bright, engaging and solicitous man. Too bad O'Reilly never bothered to talk to any of Reagan's key aides. But being anti-intellectual comes naturally to him. Ask yourself, is it really possible to be a great president while also being mentally impaired?

  Adams: In our interview O'Reilly said, "Dugard and I do what we call investigative history." He also stated that all the "Killing" books, "are not a cradle to grave exposition of the subject." Given that framework, can you point to any specific facts in Killing Reagan that are completely false?

  Shirley: Where do I begin? Umm, that the Reagans carried on affairs (no sourcing, no citations); that Mrs. Reagan approved of the theft of the Carter Briefing Books in 1980 (no sourcing, no citations); that the Briefing Books helped Reagan know in advance Carter's debate points (not true, but also no sourcing, no citations); that it was a mistake for Reagan to take Senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate in 1976 (bad opinion and wrong opinion too); plus flights of rhetorical excess that really have nothing to do with Reagan including Chappaquiddick, odd behavior by Richard Nixon and John Hinckley's childhood, all which seem to serve mostly as filler and not that it added to the storyline, such as it is.

  It was also not true that Nancy Reagan was opposed to the debate with President Carter in 1980 because "Ronnie would say something foolish." There are literally dozens of historical mistakes here but ever worse is the overall narrative, which depicts Reagan as befuddled and watching soap operas all day while Nancy Reagan ran the White House, ran the world, and never let anyone see Reagan without her personal approval. "He delegates much power to Nancy." Oh really? Again, not one footnote or endnote. He calls son Ron. Jr. (mistakenly, Ron was not a junior).

  I just barely scratched the surface here. I put an orange Post It note on each page of Killing Reagan which contained sketchy or just wrong history and there are at least fifty orange Post It notes.

  O'Reilly keeps calling his book "laudatory" towards Reagan but Killing Reagan is not. It is mostly a tissue of canards, half-truths, rumor, innuendo, insinuations and downright lies.

  Plus, the book is just poorly written, with amateurish, overly dramatic flourishes at the end of each chapter.

  There is no polite way to say that Killing Reagan is a pile of garbage. No historian 100 years from now will reach for Killing Reagan nor will O'Reilly ever be invited to speak at the Reagan Library, the Reagan Ranch, Hoover, Hillsdale or Eureka College, the Buckley Center at Yale, all of which I have spoken at.

  The essential difference is O'Reilly strives for sales, the facts be damned, while I strive for accuracy and truth, as I did in my new Reagan book, Last Act.

  Adams: Craig, on behalf of Washington Examiner readers, thank you for this interview.

  Myra Adams is a media producer and political writer. She was on the 2004 Bush campaign's creative team and the 2008 McCain campaign's ad council. Follow her on Twitter @MyraKAdams. Contact Myra at MyraAdams01@gmail.com. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.

• The American Prospect - http://prospect.org/article/question-character-craig-shirleys-scurrilous-attack-liberal-historian-rick-perlstein

  A Question of Character: Craig Shirley's Scurrilous Attack on Liberal Historian Rick Perlstein
  ADELE M. STAN AUGUST 13, 2014
  An assault on the character of a progressive intellectual invites an assessment of the attacker's character—not to mention his client list.

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  CraigShirley.com
  Craig Shirley of the public relations firm Shirley & Banister, whose clients have included Sarah Palin, Dinesh D'Souza, Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich.

  In a recent article about attacks on the character of historian Rick Perlstein, the New York Times dropped the ball of responsible journalism by giving equal weight to the claims of the attacker and the defense mounted by the attacked. So says the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan:

  It’s as if The Times is saying: Here’s an accusation; here’s a denial; and, heck, we don’t really know. We’re staying out of it. Readers frequently complain to me about this he said, she said false equivalency — and for good reason.

  The incendiary charge against Perlstein, author of Invisible Bridge, the much-heralded book about the years leading up to the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was that of plagiarism, made by Craig Shirley, who would doubtless prefer to be credited as the author of his Reagan biographies, Rendezvous With Destiny and Reagan’s Revolution, than for the public relations smear work by which he actually earns his living. His plagiarism charge is based on instances in which Perlstein paraphrased and credited Shirley’s work. As plagiarism goes, crediting the source is hardly the standard method, but, as a p.r. man, Shirley knew that all he had to do was to make the charge and demand that the all-too-compliant mainstream media respond with its typical false-equivalency approach to all tensions between left and right, and it could go viral.

  In her critique of the Times article on Shirley’s smear, Sullivan politely notes that that Shirley is of an “opposing political orientation” to that of Perlstein. Not hampered by such bounds of politeness, I can here assert that Shirley is the purveyor of the fruits of the most odious and untruthful of right-wing hacks.

  Before we examine his client list, let’s examine what Craig Shirley does in his day job at his public relations firm, Shirley & Banister, and why he says he does it, here from an interview with the Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson:

  “Everything we do is designed to move numbers, shape opinion, advance legislation, put people on book bestseller lists, stop legislation, whatever,” says Shirley, sitting next to Banister in the firm’s conference room. “It’s all designed to advance some type of philosophical goal.”

  In the case of smearing Perlstein, that philosophical goal would appear to be for control of the Reagan narrative that Shirley himself has sought to shape in his two biographies. The narrative, of course, is that of Reagan as noble revolutionary, a narrative threatened by the Perlstein book, which sets the right’s idol in the context of the tumult of his times, noting his role as an apologist for Watergate and reviser of the outcome of the Vietnam War as a win for America. In Perlstein’s telling, Reagan is less the noble revolutionary than the canny beneficiary of a clueless political establishment and a nation in longing for a denialist reinventor of its recent history.

  If one has appointed oneself as the chief storyteller of an era, it must be painful to watch a young upstart win accolades for killing your happily-ever-after ending
  It is, however, hard to accept Shirley’s goal in blindsiding Perlstein as merely philosophical; it’s surely personal, as well. If one has appointed oneself as the chief storyteller of an era, it must be painful to watch a young upstart win accolades for killing your happily-ever-after ending (in which it is suggested that Reagan was divinely appointed) with, as several reviews have noted, an obsessively researched and exuberantly narrated tome that suggests otherwise.

  (I have avoided using Shirley’s exact words from the conclusion of Rendezvous, lest I be charged with plagiarism, despite the attribution.)

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  Perhaps the most telling testament to Shirley’s philosophical scruples is his firm’s client list, which contains quite the collection of liars, smearers and hypocrites.

  Among the most notable is Dinesh D’Souza, who was pushed out of the presidency of The King’s College, a right-wing Christian institution, after he was found to be having relations with a woman who was not his wife—and lying about just exactly when he had filed for divorce. (The filing was not made before the night he was reported to have shared a hotel room with the woman he described as he fiancée, who, as it turned out, was also married to someone who was not D’Souza.)

  But hypocrisy is hardly D’Souza’s worst sin. One need only turn to his crockumentary, 2016: Obama's America, which advances D’Souza’s free-associating theory that President Barack Obama is driven by an anti-colonial, Britain-hating ethos bequeathed to him by his Kenyan (did you hear me, I said KENYAN) father—who, in reality, Obama never really knew—to get at the essence of D’Souza’s self-promotional genius, which is the stuff of which Lucifer is said to be the prince. Shirley & Banister promoted the film with great gusto, turning it into something of a box-office phenomenon. In fact, D'Souza approached Shirley with the idea for the film before he set about making it, according to Krissah Thompson.

  The Associated Press did a fact-check of the assertions in 2016, finding these, among others, to take issue with:

  — D’Souza says Obama is “weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadists” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He does not mention that Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the drone strikes that have killed dozens of terrorists in the region.

  —D’Souza says Obama has “done nothing” to impede Iran’s nuclear ambitions, despite the severe trade and economic sanctions his administration has imposed on Iran to halt its suspected nuclear program. Obama opposes a near-term military strike on Iran, either by the U.S. or Israel, although he says the U.S. will never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

  If you had heard of this film, which was essentially a base-motivating piece of propaganda launched during the 2012 presidential campaign, before reading this article, that’s likely because of the work done by Shirley & Banister to advance it. Never mind that it’s a pack of lies. It has “a philosophical goal.”

  Other Shirley & Banister clients include columnist and liar Ann Coulter, who I once heard refer to murdered doctors who had performed abortions as people who had “had a procedure performed on them with a rifle,” and who is currently trolling for attention by condemning the American Christian missionary doctor who contracted ebola for wasting his efforts on Africans. But, hey, it’s all in the service of a philosophical goal.

  Other Shirley & Banister clients include the National Rifle Association, whose executive director, Wayne LaPierre, blamed the Sandy Hook massacre on gun-free school zones and falsely interpreted crime data to suggest violent gun crimes were rising at a time when they were not.

  Then there’s the ironically named, anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, which helped defeat Rep. Steve Driehas, Democrat of Ohio, in 2010 by posting billboards that accused him of having voted for “taxpayer-funded abortion,” when he had done nothing of the sort. (SBA List’s explanation is that he had voted for Obamacare, which it falsely asserts covers “taxpayer-funded abortion.”) Let's not forget that font of truthiness, Sarah Palin, who advances conspiracy theories with aplomb. Again, all in the service of a philosophical goal.

  The philosophy: winning by any means necessary.

• The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/meet-craig-shirley-and-diana-banister-the-rights-pitch-perfect-conservatives/2013/07/21/63cea20e-dffe-11e2-b94a-452948b95ca8_story.html?utm_term=.cf5d54dc248c

  Style
  Meet Craig Shirley and Diana Banister, the right’s pitch-perfect conservatives

  Diana L. Banister, left, heads a meeting as Emily Sissell, right, looks on at the headquarters of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs on Thursday June 27, 2013 in Alexandria, Va. Their clients include Ann Coulter. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
  By Krissah Thompson July 21, 2013 Email the author
  Diana Banister is on the line with a client — the spokesman for a group hoping to keep the Boy Scouts of America from welcoming openly gay troop leaders. The spokesman has been quoted in more than 100 news stories.

  “He absolutely doesn’t want to talk to any more media in his lifetime — ever again,” Banister says after hanging up. “He’s like, ‘I’m over the media.’ ”

  She won’t hear of it.

  “I’m like, ‘But you have to, because you’re a very, very good spokesperson,’ ” she says. “When you find people like that, you encourage them.”

  Banister and her colleagues are very, very good at encouraging, advising, cajoling and marketing their clients. With partner Craig Shirley, she heads Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, a 10-person shop based in a historic house in Old Town Alexandria. The firm is one of the few in the business that take on only conservative causes. Moderate GOP-compromise types are not welcome.

  Diana L. Banister and Craig Shirley of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs pose for a portrait in Shirley's office on Thursday June 27, 2013 in Alexandria, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
  Since 1984, Shirley & Banister has represented many of the people and groups forming the cornerstone of the modern conservative movement — from well-established outfits such as the National Rifle Association and the Club for Growth to insurgent groups including the Tea Party Patriots. The firm has flacked for commentator Ann Coulter, the antiabortion Susan B. Anthony List, Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign and the filmmakers responsible for “2016: Obama’s America,” which took off in conservative circles for its scrutiny of the president.

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  Political strategists of both parties have denounced extremism on the right and laid the blame on more than a few Shirley & Banister clients for the Republican Party’s difficulty connecting with moderates. But Shirley and Banister say they are determined to keep the ­anti-establishment message churning, especially after two consecutive GOP presidential losses and eight years of George W. Bush’s budget busting and “compassionate conservatism.”

  “Everything we do is designed to move numbers, shape opinion, advance legislation, put people on book bestseller lists, stop legislation, whatever,” says Shirley, sitting next to Banister in the firm’s conference room. “It’s all designed to advance some type of philosophical goal.”

  The room’s TV is tuned to MSNBC, the left-leaning cable channel with round-the-clock political news. The Shirley & Banister Web site features a quote from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow excoriating the “very, very able, very, very connected conservative P.R. firm . . . Shirley & Banister, which howls like a wounded animal anytime we mention their existence on television.”

  The channel is a favorite in the office, and not just because being blasted by the ideological opposition adds to the firm’s right-wing bona fides. This is a business, after all. Whereas Fox News is stocked with in-house conservative commentators, MSNBC’s liberal hosts often need a conservative foil. Shirley & Banister is more than happy to oblige.

  Old friends and business partners
  On a recent afternoon, Banister, who says she is in her 40s (she declines to be specific), and Shirley, 56, return to the office from lunch with Howard Fineman, the editorial director of the left-leaning Huffington Post Media Group and a regular commentator on MSNBC. The three are old friends, and they walk into the office sharing whispers and laughs.

  “We were just talking about this with Howard over lunch,” Shirley says. “This is as serious a fight within the Republican Party as I’ve seen before. Depending on how you view the world, there are either two political parties in America or there are three.”

  Political memorbilia is seen in Diana L. Banister’s office at the headquarters of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs on Thursday June 27, 2013 in Alexandria, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
  Shirley sees the establishment as the “Inner Party” that George Orwell wrote about in “1984.” “Reagan Democrats, conservatives, the Tea Party, populists, et cetera,” he says, are in the “Outer Party.”

  The Ronald Reagan historian and author’s roots in the conservative movement reach back to walking door to door for Barry Goldwater’s campaign with his parents, who were active in the Conservative Party of New York. He graduated from Springfield College in Massachusetts and became director of communications for the National Conservative Political Action Committee before founding the public relations firm, which typically works for 25 clients at any time and reports close to $2 million in annual billings.

  Shirley and his wife, Zorine, have been married for nearly 32 years. They met during the 1980 campaign season, when Reagan won the presidency by a landslide. Zorine later ran campaign schools for the National Conservative Foundation and was director of the Conservative Political Action Conference for four years. (People are always asking about her ethnic heritage, Shirley volunteers in a subsequent e-mail. “Her father is from Pakistan but his ancestry is Iranian. He is Parsi Zoroastrian. Zorine’s mother was part Mexican, Basque and Scottish.”)

  Banister grew up on a wheat farm in eastern Colorado, where everyone she knew was conservative. The only ­talk-radio station that reached her small town skewed liberal, and she would yell at the radio. After attending Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, she made her way to California, where she campaigned for Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996. Banister, who is not married, joined Shirley’s firm 16 years ago and now runs the day-to-day operations.

  The banter between the two longtime partners is practically spousal.

  “I’m retired,” Shirley says.

  “Don’t say that,” Banister chides.

  “She runs the firm,” he insists.

  “He’s always on e-mail. He’s throwing out ideas,” she inserts.

  “You know what I am? I am a visiting fireman. I jump in.”

  “She’s going to put this in the story.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Banister sighs.

  ‘We aren’t of the Beltway’
  The firm has been a Washington institution among conservatives for some 29 years, yet Banister argues that “even though we are inside the Beltway, we aren’t of the Beltway.”

  That’s a tough sell.

  The office is filled with maroon leather chairs, forest-green carpeting and the requisite D.C. ego wall. There are photos with Reagan, former vice president Dick Cheney and “Hardball’s” Chris Matthews, another MSNBC and Washington personality. Two of Shirley’s four children are working in the office. One answers the phone; his second-oldest is in an upstairs office doing research for Shirley’s coming book on Gingrich’s politics, called “Citizen Newt.”

  The shelves are lined with the works of Andrew Breitbart, William F. Buckley, John Bolton, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry — all one-time clients. Shirley & Banister and friendly Alexandria-based rival CRC Public Relations are the firms that very conservative figures use to pitch their messages to the media.

  When conservative author Dinesh D’Souza had the idea for a film about what life would be like in 2016 if President Obama were reelected, the ­co-director and co-writer John Sullivan sat down with Banister to discuss how to promote “2016: Obama’s America.” He had met Shirley at CPAC, which serves as a kind of Woodstock for the political right, and realized they needed the firm to help the documentary go national.

  When “2016” was previewed last July on a single screen in Houston, Banister and her team had interviews set up with the city’s talk-radio hosts. The house was packed.

  After the Houston opening, the Hollywood Reporter ran an exclusive on “2016’s” surprisingly strong box-office haul ($31,750) there. Soon, Banister had the filmmakers talking to media in Washington, generating a half-dozen headlines about the film, which had the tag­ line “Love him or hate him, you don’t know him” and argued that Obama harbored anti-colonialist views passed down from the Kenyan father he hardly knew.

  “Each market was a make or break for us,” Sullivan said in an e-mail. “As the film gained momentum, they turned their attention towards national media helping us get coverage across the spectrum.”

  By August, “2016” was expanded to more than 100 theaters and eventually rolled out to more than 1,000. Banister and her team pitched the film as an unexpected box-office breakout to media outlets across the country. More press, more interest.

  “I had my own cousin telling me, ‘You know that film ‘2016’? We’ve got to go see this film,’ ” Banister says proudly.

  Mainstream and Hollywood-trade reviews panned it as psycho-political propaganda. (“A cavalcade of conspiracy theories,” wrote a Daily Variety critic.) Conservative-leaning outlets hailed it as a revelation. (“A cautionary tale,” declared the Washington Times.)

  “There is ideological bias, and it does affect some news coverage. We understand that. We can deal with that,” Shirley says. “What we can’t put up with is disinformation. Our job is to educate and help our clients educate about what they believe.”

  There have been more than 2,000 mentions of the anti-Obama documentary in the news media. It became the second-highest grossing political documentary in recent history — earning $33.5 million on a production budget of $2.5 million, behind Michael Moore’s record-breaking “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

  Yet some of the most effective work by Shirley & Banister has been for clients angered by the Republican establishment. The firm worked with groups opposing Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, deeming her too moderate and not qualified. Miers’s name was withdrawn amid backlash.

  And when the upstart tea party emerged in 2010 as a political force, it was a natural fit.

  “We needed to hire a firm to help us get onto TV shows and not just do TV shows, but to do press releases,” says Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin, who lives in Georgia and knew no one in national politics 21 / 2 years ago.

  “She’s a consummate networker,” Martin says of Banister. “I trust her to keep things in confidence and give me advice when I need it.”

  In April, even before the Internal Revenue Service scandal broke alleging the agency had targeted conservatives by searching for groups with the words “tea party” and “patriots” in their name, Shirley & Banister got the Tea Party Patriots mentioned 30 times in news accounts and helped craft a press release that read, “Tea Party Patriots to Stage ‘Intervention’ at Senator’s State Offices,” referring to a protest against the efforts of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to forge a compromise on immigration reform.

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  Shirley describes the firm’s relationship with the GOP as “like operating in different parts of the jungle. We’re in parallel universes. There is some overlap, but to the extent that we do have a relationship, it’s like the Hatfields and McCoys,” he says through laughter.

  He latches on to a different analogy: “Cold War. We’re West, and they’re East.”

  He immediately takes it back. “Maybe that’s making it too warm.”

• US News - https://www.usnews.com/topics/author/craig_shirley

  About Craig
  Craig Shirley is the author of The New York Times bestselling "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World," as well as three bestsellers on former U.S. president Ronald Reagan – “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America” (2009), “Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All” (2005) and “Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan” (2015). He is the founder of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs.

• Huffington Post - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/craig-shirley

  Craig Shirley
  Author of three bestsellers on former U.S. president Ronald Reagan
  Craig Shirley is the author of three bestsellers on former U.S. president Ronald Reagan –Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (2009), Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All (2005), and Last Act: The Final Years and emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (2015). His book December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World appeared multiple times on the New York Times bestselling list in December 2011 and January 2012, while Last Act, was named best narrative in the non-fiction category by USA Book News for 2015. Craig is the founder of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, was chosen in 2005 by Springfield College as their Outstanding Alumnus, and has been named the First Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater, where he taught a course titled “Reagan 101.”

  His books have been hailed as the definitive works on the Gipper’s campaigns of 1976 and 1980. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch , Eureka College Board of Trustees and has lectured at the Reagan Library, the FDR Library in Hyde Park, Friends Of Ronald Reagan society in Los Angeles and the Dole Institute in Kansas. The London Telegraph called Shirley as “the best of the Reagan biographers.”

  Shirley, a widely sought after speaker and commentator, appears regularly on many network and cable shows including NewsMaxTV, FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, ABC. CBS, CNBC, C-SPAN and others. He has also written extensively for the Washington Post, NewsMax, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Town Hall, the Weekly Standard, Politico, Reuters, Lifezette and many other publications. He successfully predicted the results of the 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections.

  Craig Shirley also edited the book Coaching Youth Lacrosse for the Lacrosse Foundation. He was also the founder of the Ft. Hunt Youth Lacrosse League and coached there for 14 years with an overall record of 119 wins, 21 losses and 4 ties.

  Craig Shirley has completed two new books, Citizen Newt and Becoming Reagan about, respectively, the revolutionary life and times of Newt Gingrich and the period between 1976 and 1980 when Reagan’s political outlook and philosophy underwent an enormous and significant change. His future plans include work on three more books on Reagan including a detailed look at his 1968 run for the presidency. He is also writing a book about Dr. Howard Snyder, personal physician to President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as a book about George Washington’s family.

  Shirley and his wife, Zorine reside at “Trickle Down Point” on the Rappahannock River in Lancaster, Virginia and at Ben Lomond, an historic Georgian-style home in Tappahannock, Virginia. They are parents of four children, Matthew, Andrew, Taylor, and Mitchell. His varied interests include sailing, waterskiing, sport shooting, renovating buildings, and scuba diving. An accomplished carpenter, he has built two houses. Craig Shirley is also a member of the Reagan Alumni Association, Friends of Friendship Fire House, the Lyn Nofziger Society, Philadelphia Society, the Fusionist Society and a former board member of the American Conservative Union. He was a decorated contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.

QUOTE:
Gingrich's most
triumphant moment
goes against the author's stated purpose of
complete honesty.
Print Marked Items
Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan
Conservative
Publishers Weekly.
264.18 (May 1, 2017): p47+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative
Craig Shirley. Thomas Nelson, $29.99 (320)
ISBN 978-1-59555-448-2
There have been several books written about former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, but Shirley
(Reagan Rising) adds a decidedly conservative take on the man whom Nancy Reagan credited with
completing the "Reagan Revolution." Dismissing previous biographies as liberally biased and vengeful,
Shirley's extensive chronology of Gingrich's early career follows the young Georgia college professor as he
emerged from a pair of unsuccessful congressional races in the 1970s to become a bombastic visionary of
American politics. Over a 16-year period, the relentless "bomb throwing" Gingrich destroys the career of
Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, fiercely criticizes presidents Bush and Clinton at every turn, and ultimately
helps lead the GOP's 1994 Congressional victories. Despite Shirley's evident admiration for his subject, his
portrait is not entirely hagiographical, frequently noting when the overly confident Gingrich "wandered off
the reservation" with his grandiose style. However, the fact that the biography ends at Gingrich's most
triumphant moment, his 1994 "Contract with America" and rise to the Speakership, with nary a mention of
his four years as Speaker and ultimate resignation from Congress, goes against the author's stated purpose of
complete honesty. (Aug.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative." Publishers Weekly, 1 May 2017, p. 47+. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491575325/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4aed8072. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491575325

QUOTE:
Reading Craig Shirley has become essential for any Ronald Reagan student. Reagan Rising strengthens his
already high standing among Reagan biographers.
Reagan in the wilderness
Clark S. Judge
National Review.
69.7 (Apr. 17, 2017): p40+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 National Review, Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
Full Text: 
Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980, by Craig Shirley (Broadside, 432 pp., $29.99)
Thucydides had a great advantage over later historians in telling his tale of the Peloponnesian War: As a
general in the Greek army, he had been there. Craig Shirley, who is emerging as the most prolific and, in
some respects, most insightful chronicler of Ronald Reagan's political rise, shares that advantage. He was
there.
As a young political operative, in roles ranging from press secretary for the surprise winner of a long-shot
U.S. Senate bid to a similar position with a prominent governor to heading up a pivotal independentexpenditure
committee backing Reagan in 1980, again and again Shirley was perfectly placed to see and
understand all that went into one of the most remarkable--and, once in office, successful--political careers in
American history.
In earlier volumes, Shirley detailed Reagan's failed 1976 run for the presidency, his successful bid four years
later, and his twilight years after leaving the nation's highest office following two terms comparable in
achievement only to those of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. Now Shirley has taken on the 40th president's
equivalent of Winston Churchill's "wilderness years"--the time out of office, when many doubted his ability
to return in any serious way to the stage, much less take center stage. This was the period when Reagan's
culminating run for the presidency was born.
While it revolves around Reagan, Shirley's story also focuses on three other men--Gerald Ford, Jimmy
Carter, and George H. W. Bush.
It is widely forgotten now how bitter the division between the Ford and Reagan forces was in the mid 1970s.
Shirley takes readers through a compressed account of the 1976 campaign for the GOP nomination--"the
tightest two-way race for a major-party nomination in modern political history," Newsweek (quoted by
Shirley) called it--and the fall campaign that followed. Some thought that after Reagan's strong challenge,
Ford should offer him second spot on the ticket. Such was the personal animosity that Ford refused.
With his brilliant, semi-extemporaneous speech on the convention's last night and impressive appearances
before state delegations over the previous week, Reagan emerged as, in the words of prominent columnist
Jack Germond, the GOP's "heir apparent."
Yet Ford was far from out of the game. He disliked Reagan, who represented a rising but, in the view of
moderates, dysfunctional part of the party, and he felt that Reagan had not given his full energies to the
general-election campaign, facilitating Carter's victory. Reagan in turn was disgusted at Ford's hardball
tactics during the nomination fight and opposed Ford's moderate-Republican approach to the Soviets, the
economy, and much else. The rivalry hung over the Republican party even into the 1980 GOP national
convention in Detroit. As Shirley tells it, on Carter's inauguration day, as Ford "jetted off to California" after
the ceremonies, he "told a reporter, after dining on shrimp and steak and a couple of dry martinis on the 707
that had been designated Air Force One when he was president, that he was game for another try at the
White House in 1980 and that 'I don't want anyone to preempt the Republican presidential nomination.'"
"Anyone" meant Reagan.
Shirley is surprisingly sympathetic to Carter, who, like Reagan, was cut from populist cloth. As he explains:
Rural populism had sprung up in
Carter's South and Reagan's Midwest in
the 1890s, and was mostly focused on
the power of moneyed eastern interests,
especially large banks, railroads, and
manufacturers.... Big government was
also a focus of populists' ire, which
Carter acknowledged.... Though some
racists were involved in the populist
movement in its earlier years, both
Carter and Reagan abhorred racism.
Shirley highlights another similarity between Carter and his successor. Washington, he says,
did not understand how close Carter was
to his wife, Rosalynn. They underestimated
this steel magnolia, and for the
oft-divorced sophisticates who made up
the Washington intelligentsia, such personal
closeness between married couples
was deemed peculiar.... A cultural
rift was developing between the uncomplicated
Georgians and the unctuous
Georgetowners, who would bedevil
Carter all through [his presidency].
But though, in cultural respects, they were more like each other than like the establishment of the federal
city, Reagan and Carter could not have been more unlike in politics or political ability. Reagan celebrated
the American spirit and the American character and looked to restore vibrancy to an economy that was
increasingly enmeshed in stagnation and inflation. Carter was soon looking to impose a heavy tax on
gasoline, halt dozens of western water projects, and embrace an era of limits. Within months of Carter's
inauguration, columnist George Will would write that he had "opened a multi-front war on numerous
American practices, habits, and mores."
At about the same time, Carter, who had suggested during his campaign that Nixon's detente policy was too
weak-kneed, lectured Notre Dame's commencement audience to beware of what he called an "inordinate
fear of Communism." Soon he was calling for normalization of relations with China, Cuba, and Vietnam,
even as he was cracking down on authoritarian regimes that were, nevertheless, American allies.
Reagan bristled at all of this, but it was Carter's signing of the treaty (largely negotiated under the Ford
administration) turning control of the Panama Canal over to the Panamanian government that gave him an
opportunity to act. Almost alone among major American political figures, he opposed the pact and
campaigned against it--and though the pro-treaty forces prevailed in the Senate, Reagan won in the country.
The nation had seen a man unafraid to take on all comers in defense of what he saw as right.
Despite numerous hints and feints over the next two years, Ford never entered the 1980 race. Instead former
congressman, ambassador, Republican National Committee chairman, and CIA chief George H. W. Bush
emerged from a crowded field to become Reagan's chief rival. In 1979, Bush campaigned vigorously and
effectively while Reagan stayed off the campaign trail, skipping major events and sticking to his radio
commentary, columns, and paid appearances. The reason for this reticence was John Sears, Reagan's 1976
campaign manager and the man initially in charge of the 1980 run. Shirley is highly critical of Sears's
strategy of aloofness, which came within a breath of killing Reagan's candidacy.
Across the nation and particularly in Iowa, Bush and his impressive and equally energetic family were
everywhere, with the result that Bush won the Iowa caucuses. The next big prize was New Hampshire, five
weeks after Iowa. Losing patience with Sears, Reagan took control of his organization and campaigned even
more intensively in the Granite State than Bush. Then, the Saturday before the primary, in a showdown
debate with Bush, Reagan displayed the same steel and fire that had marked his Panama Canal advocacy. As
a local newspaper editor, who was the debate's moderator, tried to turn off his microphone over a dispute
about the role in the debate of other candidates, Reagan, who was sponsoring the forum himself, sternly
stopped him with the now famous remark, "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green." By Tuesday night,
the nomination was all but in Reagan's hands.
As he concludes, Shirley offers this assessment of his subject:
Reagan remains one of the most fascinating
figures of history and the American
presidency, in part because he was a constantly
evolving individual. His worldview
in 1964 was not his worldview in
1980. His conservatism had changed,
from being simply against the intrusion
of big government to the more positive
advance of individual freedom.
Reading Craig Shirley has become essential for any Ronald Reagan student. Reagan Rising strengthens his
already high standing among Reagan biographers.
Mr. Judge is the managing director of the White House Writers Group and the chairman of the Pacific
Research Institute.
Caption: Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush leave the stage following a Republican presidential debate
in Nashua, N.H., February 1980.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Judge, Clark S. "Reagan in the wilderness." National Review, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 40+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A488311903/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7b52d814.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A488311903

QUOTE:
Shirley's Rendezvous
with Destiny, just as in his previous book, Reagan's Revolution, is a paradigm of this period of Reagan
scholarship. It is an exhaustive study that will be at the very core of the Reagan bibliography for future
generations, and will not anytime soon--if ever--be surpassed.

Their finest hour
Jason Emerson
The American Spectator.
42.10 (Dec. 2009): p86+.
COPYRIGHT 2009 The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
Full Text: 
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America
By Craig Shirley
(ISI BOOKS, 740 PAGES, $30)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
THE LANDSLIDE OUTCOME OF THE 1980 presidential election now seems a foregone conclusion.
With double-digit inflation and interest rates, high taxes, a loss of international prestige, and the indignity of
American hostages in Iran, President Jimmy Carter's loss to former California governor Ronald Reagan
seems inevitable. The electoral blowout of 489-49 and the popular victory by almost 9 million votes seems
as unsurprising in retrospect as Franklin Roosevelt's fourth term. But as Craig Shirley shows in his new
book, Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, Reagan's path
to the White House--from the Republican primaries to the general election--was anything but a smooth
journey, and nearly ended in failure.
In truth, Reagan's 1980 victory began with his 1976 sliver-thin loss to then president Gerald R. Ford in the
Republican primaries. Reagan's convention speech that year galvanized the Republican Party--and made
many wonder if they had chosen the wrong candidate. Reagan spent the four years from 1976 to 1980
speaking and writing about conservative causes and ideals, and campaigning for GOP candidates across the
country. He entered the 1980 Republican primary as the clear front-runner, but by no means the only
candidate. It became a race not just for the leading of America, but for the soul of the Republican Party. It
was a contest between men of vastly different political ideologies: liberal Republicans such as John
Anderson, moderate, country club Republicans like George H. W. Bush, and conservatives such as Ronald
Reagan.
Who knows or remembers today how perilously close Reagan came to losing the nomination that year?
Shirley reveals the Reagan campaign's strategy and characters in more detail than has ever been
accomplished, from the arrogant yet brilliant campaign manager John Sears, to the involvement of Nancy
Reagan, to the vagaries of the candidate himself. As Shirley clearly shows, Ronald Reagan was an
exceptional visionary, politician, and campaigner, but his great weakness was his penchant for coasting
through a campaign if he was not challenged. This, in fact, along with bad advice to avoid campaigning in
the all-important first primary in New Hampshire, led to Reagan's shocking loss to George H. W. Bush in
the Granite State. After this loss, Reagan was "on the brink of political oblivion," as Shirley states.
From this first loss until his ultimate victory in the primaries, we see Reagan not as a flawless conservative
hero, but as the man and the candidate that he honestly was, one with great strengths and also weaknesses.
His political acumen, his intelligence and charm, his ability to communicate and connect with voters, all are
evident. But while Shirley clearly admires Reagan, the author pulls no punches and makes no excuses for
the Gipper's flaws. He shows time and again how Reagan "coasted" through certain areas and aspects of the
campaign; how Reagan made mistakes by skipping debates and made misstatements on the trail; that
Reagan at times put too much faith in certain of his advisers, and as a consequence even betrayed the loyalty
of other friends and advisers, such as the firing of longtime friend and adviser Michael Deaver. Shirley
shows Reagan's occasional temper, such as when his argument with campaign manager John Sears nearly
ended with Reagan punching the obstinate and arrogant man in the face.
The narrative of Rendezvous with Destiny flows smoothly from campaign to campaign, showing the
workings and strategies, the successes and failures of all the candidates: Reagan, Bush, Anderson, John
Connally, Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and the waffling indecision of former President Ford. There also is
equal study given to the Democratic primary race between President Carter and Massachusetts Senator
Edward M. Kennedy--a race that showed Carter's ruthless campaign tactics, and bloodied him up severely
for the general election. As the reader is moved through these interweaving stories, the classic events of the
campaign are always looming on the horizon, such as the great two-man debate at Nashua High School in
New Hampshire where Reagan outflanked his main opponent, George Bush, by bringing the other noninvited
candidates to the stage. When the moderator tried to turn off Reagan's microphone, the governor's
angry shout of, "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!" resounds through the story.
The exhaustive study of both the Republican and Democratic primary races is followed by an equally
meticulous recounting of the general election between Reagan and Carter. In this epochal race, the outcome
of which ultimately transformed the entire American political landscape and national direction, Shirley
reveals many of the criticisms that dogged Reagan throughout his two terms as president, such as his
advanced age (which Shirley says Reagan's enemies chewed on "like a mongrel dog on a soup bone"), and
his perceived "warmongering" and lack of intelligence. Though all without merit, these attacks were
continuous by his Republican opponents, by President Carter, and by the national media, and the repetition
of these attacks aggravated Reagan to no end.
As with the description of the GOP primary races, Shirley's narrative of the general election flows liquidly
between the two campaigns, examining their highs and lows. Reagan's relentless optimism is as shiningly
evident throughout the story as Carter's depressing pessimism. The story is as exhilarating as it is
illuminating, as the sense of expectation builds toward the famous lone debate between Reagan and Carter,
in which Reagan quips, "There you go again," and then on to election night, when Carter concedes before
the polls are even closed and Reagan takes the call while standing in a towel just after a shower.
One of the many interesting subtexts of this book is a full accounting of former president Gerald Ford's
place in the 1980 election. Would he run in the primaries or would he not? Would he endorse a candidate or
would he not? After Reagan won the nomination, where did Ford stand in relation to his 1976 opponent,
whom the former president believed had lost him the election to Jimmy Carter four years previous? Also
included is the full story of the nearly-accomplished-but-not-to-be "dream ticket" of Reagan-Ford at the
Detroit convention. How did this potential pairing occur? Why would Reagan have considered such an
arrangement? And how exactly did the idea fall apart to make way for George Bush as Reagan's running
mate? All of these questions are answered, and show the pragmatism as well as the wisdom of candidate
Reagan.
INTERESTINGLY, it is a chapter that seems to stall the narrative flow that is actually one of the great
moments in the book. For nearly 30 years there has been a mystery as to how and by whose hand the
Reagan presidential campaign had obtained President Carter's top-secret debate briefing books. There was
even a congressional inquiry into the theft in 1983, with no solution reached. Craig Shirley has unearthed
the answer, and reveals it to have been unsavory political operative--in fact a former Communist organizer--
Paul Corbin. Corbin was a friend of the Kennedy family and an earnest supporter of Edward Kennedy's bid
to dethrone President Carter in 1980. Yet when Kennedy failed to win the nomination, Corbin's hatred of
Carter led him to assist the Reagan campaign.
Shirley shows how Corbin offered to help the campaign with organized labor, and that campaign manager
Jim Baker (brought over from the Bush primary campaign) had a hand in bringing him in, despite his dislike
of the man. Corbin claimed his position was to produce research reports on Florida, but in reality his
intention was not so much to help Reagan as it was to destroy Carter. Shirley shows how Corbin obtained
the books, who knew about it in the Reagan campaign, and how the 1983 congressional inquiry failed to
name the thief.
This revelation is an impressive bit of historical sleuthing, and a microcosm of the craftsmanship of the
entire book. Shirley's sources are vast and impressive, utilizing not only primary and secondary source
books, but dozens of archival collections from across the country; volumes of contemporary news accounts
in newspapers, periodicals, and television; and nearly 200 interviews with all the major players throughout
the entire 1980 election season. These sources augment the author's clear and complete understanding of his
subject matter.
Shirley has proven himself a master of presidential campaign histories-a true heir to Theodore White, whose
histories of the presidential campaigns of 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 are benchmarks for political literature
and campaign histories. Shirley's first book, Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That
Started It All (Nelson Current, 2005), tackled the history of Reagan's quest to wrest the 1976 Republican
presidential nomination away from then president Gerald R. Ford. That book was not merely an applause at
near victory; it was an exhaustive study of the entire campaign, the national scene, the state of the political
parties, the nature of every candidate and every state primary. It showed Reagan virtuous and flawed, winner
and loser, and immaculately set the stage for Shirley's latest offering in Rendezvous with Destiny. Likewise,
this book will make readers hungry for a study of the 1984 presidential campaign, which Shirley has already
begun, and which promises to be the concluding masterstroke in his triptych of Reagan campaign studies.
Perhaps George Will explains Rendezvous with Destiny best when he writes in his foreword to the book,
"This book is both a primer on practical politics and a meditation on the practicality of idealism. It arrives,
serendipitously, at a moment when conservatives are much in need of an inspiring examination of their
finest hour."
History vindicates truth; that is an axiom of the historical profession. We are now at the beginnings of the
dispassionate historical study of Reagan's legacy. It takes decades for contemporary passions to cool, for the
memoirs of those who knew and worked with Reagan to be written and digested. Now comes the time of the
research historian.
The historiography of all epochal figures runs the same schedule. Abraham Lincoln's legacy was at first
clouded by his martyrdom, then by the passions of the Civil War generation. As sociologist Barry Schwartz
has so deftly explained his book, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory, it took decades for
Lincoln to be examined objectively, and it took a new generation of Americans to appreciate Lincoln for his
faults as well as his virtues.
The study of Ronald Reagan is following this same path. It is now in the beginning stages of objective
inquiry, where Reagan's strengths and his weaknesses, his virtues as well as faults, are all under
consideration to give a complete view of this iconic man. It is a crucial period when historical objectivity is
coupled with the knowledge and reminiscences of people who knew Reagan. Craig Shirley's Rendezvous
with Destiny, just as in his previous book, Reagan's Revolution, is a paradigm of this period of Reagan
scholarship. It is an exhaustive study that will be at the very core of the Reagan bibliography for future
generations, and will not anytime soon--if ever--be surpassed.
Jason Emerson is the author of Lincoln the Inventor, The Madness of Mary Todd Lincoln, and a
forthcoming biography of Robert Todd Lincoln.

QUOTE:
Rendezvous with Destiny is an important, timely book that conservatives, Reagan admirers, and students of
electoral politics will cherish and enjoy for years. Credit is due to Shirley for a monumental
accomplishment.

Emerson, Jason
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Emerson, Jason. "Their finest hour." The American Spectator, Dec. 2009, p. 86+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A214396206/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f9d6abc7.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A214396206
Bliss was it in that dawn
Jay Cost
National Review.
62.1 (Jan. 25, 2010): p49.
COPYRIGHT 2010 National Review, Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
Full Text: 
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, by Craig Shirley (ISI,
740 pp., $30)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
RONALD REAGAN'S 1980 campaign for the presidency was historic in numerous ways. Not only did
Reagan inaugurate a new era of conservative governance, he was the only candidate in the 20th century to
defeat an incumbent of the opposing party who had served just one term in office, and he did it by making
major inroads into typically Democratic territory--winning working-class voters, white ethnics, and
Catholics, all of whom became known as the "Reagan Democrats." Republicans have followed this Reagan
template for 30 years--with great success in 1988, 1994, 2000, and 2004. When the GOP finally recaptures
the presidency, it's an easy bet that the victorious Republican candidate will owe a great debt to Ronald
Reagan and the campaign of 1980.
Craig Shirley has offered a comprehensive account of Reagan's triumphant march to Washington.
Rendezvous with Destiny is a follow-up to his well-received account of Reagan's failed quest for the
presidency in 1976. Shirley takes the reader on a step-by-step journey from Reagan's defeat at the 1976
Republican convention to his landslide victory over Jimmy Carter.
It sometimes feels as though no detail has been spared. In the first half of the book, the reader is treated to an
extensive discussion of the gripping primary battles on both the Republican and the Democratic sides. The
Republican clash between Reagan and George H. W. Bush receives most of the attention, but Shirley is
careful to keep the reader apprised of developments in the clash between Carter and Sen. Edward Kennedy.
He approaches the often bitter general-election campaign with the same exacting care. Along the way come
fascinating insider perspectives of the historic moments in the campaign: the Nashua Telegraph debate
between Reagan and Bush, in which the Gipper famously shouted, "I'm paying for this microphone, Mr.
Green!"; the ever-present question of whether Gerald Ford would enter the race; the last-minute decision to
go with George H. W. Bush as running mate; "debate-gate," or the issue of Carter's stolen debate books; and
the late-breaking swing of the electorate to Reagan.
This is consequential history at every step, as the events of that cycle set the course for the Republican party
for the next 30 years. Shirley recognizes the importance of the proceedings he catalogues, and accordingly
he leaves no stone unturned. At 600 pages of narrative, plus almost 90 pages of notes, Rendezvous with
Destiny gives every impression that its account is thorough and authoritative, that this is the book on the
1980 campaign. Shirley's research included over 150 insider interviews that span the political divides of that
election. It's no small feat that this book is based on direct accounts from a diverse group that includes
George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Dick Cheney, Walter Mondale, Michael Reagan, and many more. The
result is a work that goes beyond the bland details and self-serving quotations of more typical accounts.
Shirley obviously persuaded many of his diverse subjects to speak candidly, which makes this a first-rate
work of insider history. His book reads like Bob Woodward at his very best: a probing, insightful, behindthe-scenes
examination of events that had profound implications for the trajectory of American politics.
Shirley is admittedly a Reagan supporter, and while the narrative is not written explicitly from this
perspective, it is clearly sympathetic. This makes for especially interesting reading in the first half, which is
probably the strongest part of the work. There, Reagan is in the midst of an internecine war in the
Republican party. Reagan was ultimately successful in uniting the rival groups within the GOP under the
conservative banner. Yet campaigning amidst the cold, snow-covered hills of the Granite State in January
1980, Reagan was not yet the Reagan so many of us remember fondly today. He was instead the most
prominent representative of a faction in a diverse party still struggling to find a voice in the wake of the
Watergate scandal. In many respects, this was the time and place of the battle for the heart of the modernday
Republican party. Shirley is clearly rooting for Reagan during these events, just as any conservative
reader no doubt would today; but what is fascinating is that so often one finds Shirley (and oneself) rooting
against the Bush family, which would become the heir to the conservative dynasty Reagan initiated. Indeed,
the significance of Reagan's victory is particularly striking when one considers that the presidency of
George W. Bush essentially united the partisans of two of Reagan's opponents--George H. W. Bush and
Gerald Ford--under the banner of Reaganite conservatism.
The only significant problem with the book is that Shirley occasionally misses the forest for the trees: If one
did not know already that the campaign of 1980 was so consequential, it would be hard to glean this fact
fully from the book. The larger impact of events is left relatively unexplored. This might be an inevitable
consequence of providing such detail, but it could also be a result of Shirley's decision to organize his
material chronologically. If he had arranged it thematically, he might have had a greater opportunity to offer
his reflections; given his vast knowledge of the subject, that would have been of great interest. Thematic
organization might also have ameliorated the problem of occasionally rough transitions; the book has a habit
of jumping from one event to another without developing a connection between them.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This absence of the larger picture is felt most acutely in the book's first half. President Carter comes across
clearly here--as in many other accounts--as out of his depth, not capable of executing his duties well, and
certainly not able to inspire confidence in the American people. While the election of 1980 was a latebreaking
one, in retrospect the result does not seem to be nearly as big a surprise as it did at the time.
Viewed in historical context, perhaps Reagan's most extraordinary feat in that cycle was his victory over the
powerful moderates in his own party, which caused an important realignment within the GOP. Yet Shirley
does not dedicate a great deal of space to reflecting on how this happened. His dedication is primarily to
cataloguing every event that made it happen. After 600 pages, this absence of historical analysis leaves one
wanting more.
But these are quibbles. Shirley has accomplished a great feat of scholarship and research, and it could not
have come at a better time, as many conservatives are beginning to feel "deja vu all over again." The current
political climate is highly reminiscent of that of the late 1970s: On one hand, we have a president with an
amazingly thin resume, whose appeal to the electorate was based instead on his superior moral qualities, but
who has since raised concerns that he might not be up to the job. On the other hand, we have a GOP divided
into factions, squabbling with itself over minor issues, often to the point that dyspeptic Republicans seem
most intent on undermining the party's broader goals.
These historical similarities add special value to Shirley's work. It should give conservatives and
Republicans hope that victory is possible, despite the GOP's current problems. It should also provide a
template to evaluate the Republican contenders for the presidential nomination. Conservatives should keep
an open mind about the nomination: After all, many conservative heroes and leaders were not Reagan men
in 1980.
Rendezvous with Destiny is an important, timely book that conservatives, Reagan admirers, and students of
electoral politics will cherish and enjoy for years. Credit is due to Shirley for a monumental
accomplishment.
Mr. Cost is the author of the HorseRaceBlog at RealClearPolitics.com.
Cost, Jay
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cost, Jay. "Bliss was it in that dawn." National Review, 25 Jan. 2010, p. 49. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A216030260/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4b97ef97.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A216030260
Rendezvous with Destiny
California Bookwatch.
(Nov. 2013):
COPYRIGHT 2013 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text: 
Rendezvous with Destiny
Craig Shirley
ISI Books
3901 Centerville Road Wilmington, DE 19807-1938
1935191934, $22.00, www.isibooks.org
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America is a pick for American
history and political studies libraries alike and offers a solid analysis of the 1980 presidential campaign and
how an election initially thought too close to call became a Reagan landslide. Chapters delve into campaign
strategy and campaign trail specifics, offer a point-by-point examination of polls, politics, and changed
strategies during the election, and provide important points about the political campaign process unique to
Reagan's approach. Any political studies collection will find this an important analysis.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Rendezvous with Destiny." California Bookwatch, Nov. 2013. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A352232672/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6472ec67.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A352232672

QUOTE:
is
proof that a 30-year campaign can unfold like a suspense novel if it has the right storyteller.
This is the single best book on an American election since Teddy White laid down his notepad.

Artur Davis
Artur Davis
The American Spectator.
45.10 (Dec. 2012): p44+.
COPYRIGHT 2012 The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
Full Text: 
JONATHAN MAHLER'S Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning is an undeservedly obscure
pleasure. It describes, with a novelist's acumen for detail, the passion play that was New York City in 1977,
when a power blackout and the Son of Sam killing spree brought the city to the edge of a breakdown.
Mahler adds to that canvas an epic, brutal mayoral election; the melodrama that was the New York Yankees
chasing a title amidst the distraction of Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson blood feuding; and the decadence
of the city's counter-culture in the dawn before AIDS. There are a handful of writers who can seamlessly
shift from the burlesque comedy of the Yankee locker room to Mario Cuomo on the cusp of political fame to
a blow-by-blow of the dark hell of an urban blackout. This is an ambitious book that can double as a primer
on how to transform the journalistic essay into book form. It is stunningly good.
* Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln is the coffee table tome that
actually deserves to be read. It is massive, just under a thousand pages, too big to lug through an airport, but
indispensable if one wants to relive the contours of American civic life from the founding of our
constitutional democracy to its unraveling under the weight of slavery. This is not the Wilentz, by the way,
whom conservatives learned to loathe during the Clinton impeachment saga and who penned an essay
dubbing George Bush the "worst president": it is instead the too-intoxicating-to-browse narrative of a
judicious observer who conveys the interplay between ideas, personalities, and blind chance that always
drives politics. And any conservatives who can't get Wilentz's past polemics out of their system should read
the unblinking dissections in the New Republic and Newsweek he made of Barack Obama during the
primaries in 2008: if Democrats had listened, the president would have spent the last four years as a
chastened senator who aimed too high too soon.
* Craig Shirley's Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America is
proof that a 30-year campaign can unfold like a suspense novel if it has the right storyteller. This history of
the 1980 campaign cycle is a gorgeous reminder that there was nothing inevitable about Reagan's ascension:
the country in the late '70s was barely a quarter Republican, Edward Kennedy seemed an inevitable
president, and the Republican establishment wagered its bets on Howard Baker, John Connally, and George
H.W. Bush. How Reagan overcame those odds and refashioned conservatism for the modern era is an
account that Shirley nails, and it is one that conservatives Dught to read until it is hardwired into their
brains. This is the single best book on an American election since Teddy White laid down his notepad.
* Mark Frost's Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series is so good that it creates the right
kind of reader's remorse: the wish that the author would keep going and tackle Muhammad Ali's survival of
Joe Frazier in Manila, or John McEnroe's clash with Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon in 1980, or Jack Nicklaus'
last Masters win in 1986. Every sports epic in our youth deserves to be recreated with this level of skill. It is
no small gift to breathe drama into the fine print of a game between largely forgotten men played out almost
40 years ago, but Frost does it. This is baseball at its peak, when 75 million Americans stayed up watching
Carlton Fisk's winning home run, when the World Series matched its pretentious title, and when the
resolution of its championship was not a month-long bore.
Artur Davis is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a fellow at Harvard's Institute of
Politics.
Davis, Artur
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Davis, Artur. "Artur Davis." The American Spectator, Dec. 2012, p. 44+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A312404023/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=45fd8d9b.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A312404023

QUOTE:
tirelessly researched, well-written book by conservative public affairs maven Craig Shirley proves a
satisfying first entry.

Book Review: A revolutionary look at
Ronald Reagan
Douglas Quenqua
PR Week (US).
(Apr. 4, 2005): p24.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Haymarket Media, Inc.
http://www.prweek.com
Full Text: 
Title: Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That
Started It All
Author: Craig Shirley
Publisher: Nelson Current (January 2005), 417 pages
Reviewed by Douglas Quenqua
This tirelessly researched, well-written book by conservative public affairs maven Craig Shirley proves a
satisfying first entry.
Shirley is a well-known fan of Reagan's, and his office houses one of the richer collections of Reagan
memorabilia. But this is no fawning tribute, as are many Reagan tomes. Shirley closely explores the many
factors that moved the reluctant Reagan to take on his party's standard bearer - a rarity in modern politics.
In so doing, Shirley tells another story: that of the modern conservative movement, which in 1976 was, at
best, a fringe group within a gasping GOP. As Shirley tells it, Reagan's 1976 challenge from the right helped
give voice and legitimacy to an ideological force that, nearly 30 years later, not only dominates the party,
but all of US politics.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Quenqua, Douglas. "Book Review: A revolutionary look at Ronald Reagan." PR Week [US], 4 Apr. 2005, p.
24. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A131119849/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8ba73890. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A131119849

QUOTE:
Shirley is well known as a talented political operative; he shows himself in this suspenseful
book to be, as well, a skillful and engaging writer.

Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of
the Campaign That Started It All
Michael Potemra
National Review.
57.6 (Apr. 11, 2005): p49.
COPYRIGHT 2005 National Review, Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
Full Text: 
* One of the season's most exciting political books is Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the
Campaign That Started It All (Nelson Current, 417 pp., $25.99), by Craig Shirley. Many chapters in the
Reagan story have become worn through repetition; not so his daring attempt in 1976 to unseat incumbent
president Gerald Ford. Reagan's insurgency against the GOP Establishment, and against the entrenched
ideology of mainstream liberalism, could have been the last gasp of the 1964 Goldwater forces; it proved,
instead, to be the birth pangs of the mainstream conservatism that would prevail in America for decades to
come. Craig Shirley is well known as a talented political operative; he shows himself in this suspenseful
book to be, as well, a skillful and engaging writer.
Potemra, Michael
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Potemra, Michael. "Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All." National
Review, 11 Apr. 2005, p. 49. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A145339409/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8e33d085. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A145339409
Book Review: Fritz the Cat; He purrs and
plays his hour upon the national stage
Craig Shirley
The Weekly Standard.
16.14 (Dec. 20, 2010):
COPYRIGHT 2010 News America Incorporated
http://www.weeklystandard.com
Full Text: 
Byline: Craig Shirley
The Good Fight
A Life in Liberal Politics
by Walter Mondale
with David Hage
Scribner, 384 pp., $28
If the reader is looking for earth-shattering--or gossipy (as in puerile)--news previously not known, Walter
Mondale's autobiography is not for thee. On the other hand, if you're looking for a recollection of recent
history written by an utterly decent man, about whom there has never been a whiff of scandal, who was
always a good American, husband, father, and patriot, it is a good read.
It also contains a lot of good perspective (from his vantage point, I hasten to add) on some of the more
interesting and important events of the 1960s-80s. Mondale is Old School in the best sense, rarely letting us
know what he really thought of his political adversaries. Even Ronald Reagan--who twice pounded Mondale
into the ground, in 1980 and again in 1984--is, for the most part, treated respectfully, even as Mondale does
not fathom Reagan's appeal or ideology.
Don't be put off by the similarity to the title of Benjamin Bradlee's memoir (A Good Life): Mondale, unlike
Bradlee, does not dwell on his rate of masturbation while at boarding school. Indeed, Mondale grew up
poor, attended public schools, and came to his Midwestern liberalism/populism naturally, intellectually,
organically. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I like Walter Mondale and always have,
especially since he granted me several hours of interview time for a book on the 1980 Reagan campaign.
The former vice president was garrulous, chatty, warm, and informative. He told many great and small
stories which became important contributions to my book, including his amusement that, while he had an
office in the West Wing complex (like Zbigniew Brzezinski), unlike Jimmy Carter's national security
adviser, he did not have a private bathroom.
Mondale was America's first consequential vice president, unlike Richard Johnson, Martin Van Buren's
deputy, who was so bored he went home to Kentucky to manage a tavern. Or any in another long line of
second bananas ignored, or worse, insulted, by the man at the top, such as poor Thomas Marshall, who
waited a year and a half for a meeting with Woodrow Wilson. Mondale was the first vice president with an
office in the White House, the first to fully occupy the official residence of the vice president (much to the
consternation of the chief of naval operations, since the pleasant Victorian mansion on Massachusetts
Avenue had been the CNO's home for decades). Carter, the outsider to Washington, and even his own party
relied heavily on Mondale for advice.
If there is any drawback here, it is that Mondale is frequently too kind: His nemesis Nixon is a 'brilliant
politician.' Also, while he celebrates the contributions of the Enlightenment to the thinking of the Founders,
and declined to support Henry Wallace in 1948 because Wallace was too soft on the Soviets after their coup
in Czechoslovakia, you might reasonably assume that Mondale would become more conservative in his
politics. You would be mistaken. But then again, he came up in a time when American liberalism was vastly
different from what it is today. You could champion the individual, denounce communism--and embrace
'social justice.' There are interesting, even funny, anecdotes about his Minnesota mentor, Hubert Humphrey,
another of a vanishing breed of gentleman-politicians, as well as Barry Goldwater, whom Mondale
describes as a 'personal friend.'
The Good Fight is so called because it details Mondale's battles against racial segregation and the old boy
network in the Democratic party--especially the Dixiecrats of the civil rights era. He does make mistakes,
however, such as claiming that Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in 'Philadelphia, Mississippi, just a
few miles from the place where three civil rights workers had been murdered during the Freedom Summer
of 1964.' This is a myth that had been passed from one liberal to another over the years. (Actually, Reagan
began his fall campaign at Liberty State Park in New Jersey.) It was no less than Jimmy Carter who kicked
off his fall campaign in Alabama, near an office of the Ku Klux Klan, making an open appeal to regional
pride as a means of holding on to a South that was leaning toward Reagan.
When I interviewed Mondale he told me in no uncertain terms (as he has told others) that he had seriously
considered resigning in the summer of 1979 because he was deeply opposed to, and offended by, Carter's
famous 'malaise' speech. He told me that he had implored Carter not to deliver it as the speech seemed to
blame the American people for their troubles, not the government that was the architect of high inflation and
long gas lines. Yet here he says that he did not consider resigning.
But as I say, The Good Fight is a good read, well written, enjoyable, and reflective of the contributions of an
eminently creditable man to the national debate--a vice president who might well have been more influential
on policy and government, over the long term, than his own president.
Craig Shirley, president and CEO of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, is the author, most recently, of
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America.
Craig Shirley
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Shirley, Craig. "Book Review: Fritz the Cat; He purrs and plays his hour upon the national stage." The
Weekly Standard, 20 Dec. 2010. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A244343447/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a1189611.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A244343447
The decline of liberal history
Michael Knox Beran
National Review.
66.16 (Sept. 8, 2014): p40.
COPYRIGHT 2014 National Review, Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
Full Text: 
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and
the Rise of Reagan, by Rick Perlstein
(Simon & Schuster, 880 pp., $37.50)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
It is the thesis of Rick Perlstein's book that the United States, circa 1970, was on the verge of a moral and
political breakthrough. Perlstein compares the nascent revolution in sentiment to the French Enlightenment,
that "sweeping eighteenth-century intellectual-cum-political movement," he writes, which saw "all settled
conceptions of society thrown up in the air, which introduced radical new notions of liberty and dignity,
dethroned God, and made human reason the new measure of moral worth--a little like the 1960s and '70s."
In Perlstein's telling, the advocates of the new American enlightenment stood ready to rouse their fellow
citizens from their dogmatic slumbers and teach them to "think like grown-ups." Under so luminous a
tuition, Americans would embrace a better patriotism: They would put away childish things and master the
grown-up arts of "questioning authority" and "unsettling ossified norms." But like the evil djinn in a fairy
tale, Ronald Reagan appeared, and foreclosed the happy possibility of a "new, higher patriotism." Instead of
encouraging Americans to grow up, Reagan insisted on keeping them in a state of perpetual infancy, and
taught them "to think like children waiting for a man on horseback to rescue them: a tragedy."
A curious image: Surely it is the odd child who longs to be saved by an equestrian hero. The inaptness of the
phrasing betrays the sloppiness of the argument. Reagan, Perlstein contends, radiated an "optimism" so
"blithe" that it overwhelmed the rational faculties of the citizenry. His supporters felt "so good in his
presence" that they were "eager and willing to follow him" wherever he might lead them. And the place to
which he did lead them was peculiarly delightful--the lost paradise of childhood, where they recovered the
"simple moral clarity," the "crystalline black-or-white melodramas" of childish innocence, as yet untouched
by the complexities of adult experience.
This is fantasy and condescension. Reagan, though a charming man, was not, like Prospero, a caster of
spells. He succeeded, not because he waved a magic wand and restored the childish hour of splendour in the
grass, of glory in the flower, but because he expressed, more lucidly than any of his competitors for public
office, convictions that many millions of his fellow countrymen (the greater number of them of sound mind
and reasonable competence) believed to be true.
Truth may make us free, but it is not always helpful in the selling of books. And so we are treated, in The
Invisible Bridge, not to the story of the rise of a democratic statesman who, like Lincoln or Churchill, got
the biggest truths right, but to a morality play in which a deluded charlatan--an "athlete" in the "denial" of
reality, a master of turning "complexity and confusion and doubt" into "simplicity and stout-hearted
certainty"--vanquishes the high-minded patriots who seek to enlighten a dimwitted nation. Reagan, in
Perlstein's account, is the foolish-fond Superman of counter-Enlightenment. He effortlessly surpasses such
triflers, in the art of reaction, as Maistre, Burke, Coleridge, Chateaubriand, Donoso Cortes, and Newman,
whose combined genius, after all, conspicuously failed to arrest the progress of the original, Frenchphilosophical
Enlightenment that Perlstein holds in such high regard. In contrast to these bunglers, the
Reagan of The Invisible Bridge routs the agents of American Aufklarung singlehandedly, a feat that is the
more extraordinary given that he was, Perlstein assures us, a moron of the first water.
But Perlstein's account of the virtues of his enlightened, Reagan-despising patriots is over-simple. Among
their claims to distinction, he says, is their conviction that Americans must "question leadership ruthlessly."
On closer inspection, however, it appears that they wanted Americans to question American leadership
ruthlessly; they tended to give foreign leadership, particularly if it was Communist and despotic, a free pass.
Perlstein relates how, in a 1975 address at Barnard College, that skeptical patriot Lillian Hellman
admonished the graduating class to be wary of the government in Washington, which "spied on innocent
people who did nothing more than express their democratic right to say what they thought." A sound
admonition, as timely today as it was 40 years ago. And yet it is curious that Miss Hellman's own skepticism
seems always to have stopped at the American frontier; and indeed she once condemned John Dewey for
having dared to cast a skeptical eye on Stalin's Moscow Trials, those judicious exercises in which
Vyshinsky, the state prosecutor, sent the Old Bolsheviks to the firing squad for having conspired with
nefarious capitalists intent on the sabotage of the Soviet Workers' Paradise.
Perlstein implies that his enlightened patriots, in their willingness to deplore the actions of the United States,
are more worthy of approbation than Reagan, who figures in The Invisible Bridge as the prince of the
country's callow "flag wavers," a self-complacent man who was unable to admit that America was neither so
innocent nor so exceptional as he claimed it to be. Yet Perlstein overlooks the self-complacency of his own
preferred patriots, who risked little in smugly denouncing the repressive culture of "Amerika," safe in the
knowledge that American laws and liberties would protect them from the sort of vengeance that was
routinely visited upon those who in Hanoi, Moscow, and Havana dared to criticize the regime in their native
land.
These are, perhaps, forgivable faults of perspective and interpretation, but they flow from a more
fundamental error. Perlstein's Enlightenment is the Enlightenment of the French philosophers and of those
intellectuals who sought to emulate them. It was a movement whose patron saints, from Voltaire to Comte,
sought, as Perlstein says, to overthrow the "settled conceptions of society" in the name of reason or science.
Yet Perlstein all but entirely overlooks the chief weakness of this Enlightenment, the insistence of its
votaries that progress is something imposed from above by a virtuous sovereignty or mandarinate. Indeed, it
is precisely because they put their faith in the superior illumination of elites--committees of public safety,
party vanguards, properly credentialed administrators--that the inheritors of the French intellectual tradition
have so little sympathy for the private citizen's liberty of action. On the contrary, they seek to reform the
state, in Tocqueville's words, by means of "tyrannical regulations on all subjects" in a way that promotes the
"total absorption of the individual in the body politic." It is true, of course, that these enlightened
intellectuals are in theory advocates of what Perlstein calls "radical new notions of liberty and dignity." In
practice, however, they send their opponents (real or imagined) to the guillotine or the Gulag. They dethrone
God, and put Robespierre in his place.
There is another Enlightenment; and although Perlstein overlooks it, it is essential to any real understanding
of the statesmanship of Ronald Reagan. The Other Enlightenment grew out of the work of Anglo-Scottish
thinkers who discovered a hidden wisdom in the "ossified norms" Perlstein's patriots were so eager to
unsettle. The Other Enlightenment begins in David Hume's and Adam Smith's perception that a really free
and enlightened political order cannot be formed by the dirigiste will of rational lawgivers. "There has
probably never existed," F. A. Hayek wrote in his precis of the Anglo-Scottish point of view,
a genuine belief in freedom, and there certainly has been no successful attempt to operate a free society,
without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits and "all those securities of
liberty, which arise from regulations of long prescription and ancient usage." Paradoxical as it may appear, it
is probably true that a successful free society will always be in large measure a tradition-bound society.
[Quotation within quotation, from Joseph Butler, corrected.]
As much as Perlstein's new American patriots, who, like their heroes Ho and Che, dreamt of a Republic of
Virtue to be established by enlightened lawgivers (themselves, should the revolution succeed), Reagan, too,
was a child of enlightenment--only his was the Enlightenment not of Stalin but of Smith, not of Mao but of
Madison. Like others influenced by the Anglo-Scottish tradition, Reagan was conscious of the limitations
and fallibilities of elite knowledge. He knew that more knowledge is necessary to the functioning of a
healthy society than any one individual or small group of individuals can possibly possess; and he was
convinced that it is just because free, uncentralized societies make so much more efficient use of available
information than centrally directed ones that they are able (in Hayek's words) to produce achievements
"greater than any single mind can foresee."
In making the case for the Other Enlightenment, Reagan made no pretense to being an original scholar; he
got his own information, for the most part, secondhand, not least from the pages of this magazine. But his
intellectual conversion was, so far as I can tell, sincere, and not animated, as Perlstein implies, by a petty
grievance concerning an old tax lien, or by the mercenary motive of the money he was making as a
spokesman for the General Electric Company.
Blind as he is to the meaning of the Other Enlightenment, Perlstein can only dismiss Reagan's warnings
about the unintended consequences of state action as so much "apocalyptic" stupidity. But if in questioning
the wisdom of an ever-expanding social state Reagan was a voice of what Perlstein calls right-wing
extremism, so, too, were such men as George Orwell and Lionel Trilling. The "ultimate threat to human
freedom," Trilling wrote in a review of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, might well come from a "massive
development of the social idealism of our democratic culture."
By the end of his book, Perlstein arrives at roughly the same conceptual destination as such earlier liberal
scholars as George Kennan, Richard Hofstadter, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who each sought a larger socialadministrative
state. But his mode of getting there is different. The Invisible Bridge is a distinctly "lite"
version of the work of the old liberal masters. The book has a certain energy, derived from the hysterical
flippancy of the writing; Perlstein "cuts," like a film director, from topic to topic with a frequency that
precludes sustained analysis. Such a style, in small doses, is absorbing, and might have carried a shorter
book; but over the course of some 800 closely printed pages of text the shock of edginess loses its force; the
reader wants to understand, and not be merely bewildered and amused.
Whenever Perlstein comes to a point of real contention--the rival claims, say, of the Keynes-Samuelson and
Hayek-Friedman schools of political economy, or the pros and cons of the "last best hope" rhetoric Reagan
cribbed from Lincoln and John Winthrop--Perlstein does not go deeply into the question, as Hofstadter or
Schlesinger would have done: He hurries off to one of his set pieces on popular culture. He dilates on the
plots of The Exorcist and Jaws, quotes from innumerable syndicated columns, offers synopses of a number
of pornographic films. Whether Reagan is really, as Perlstein maintains, an American Dr. Pangloss, to be
blamed for a national cult of spurious optimism, is a question worth going into; but Perlstein does not go
into it, and instead relates gossip and innuendo concerning the private lives of the Reagans, which need not
be further noticed here. (Whether the same frenetic literary manners that have led him, in the words of the
New York Times's Sam Tanenhaus, to find "rumor more illuminating than fact" have betrayed him, as
Reagan scholar Craig Shirley maintains, into a carelessness in the acknowledgment of sources that amounts
to plagiarism is a question for another essay.)
To be sure, it is not easy for a writer today, who must get his bread in the teeth of competition from blogs
and video games, to pierce the surfaces of things and penetrate to the depths. One only wishes that Perlstein,
forced by circumstance into his own oversimplifications, could have treated more charitably those of
Reagan, who in his public speaking countenanced, at times, precisely the sort of superficiality that fills The
Invisible Bridge. Just as Perlstein would soon go broke if he tried to write, in an age of literary degeneration,
in the manner of Schlesinger or Hofstadter, so it is unlikely that Reagan would have carried 49 of 50 states
in a demotic epoch of TV politics had he framed his arguments after the fashion of The Federalist Papers.
The fact is that a statesman must galvanize opinion if he is to lead; and long before the advent of television,
thoughtful leaders judged it sometimes necessary to sacrifice subtlety if they were to carry their point.
"When Aeschines finished speaking, they said, 'How well he spoke.' But when Demosthenes finished
speaking, they said, 'Let us march.'" Like Demosthenes and Lincoln before him, Reagan sought to
illuminate the conflict between liberty and tyranny in order to mobilize the forces of freedom; and if, like
them, he did not always qualify his words with an array of doubts and reservations, he might have pointed,
by way of justification, to Winston Churchill, who in 1940 said of the ideas set forth in a mandarinish
government paper that they erred "in trying to be too clever, to enter into refinements of policy unsuited to
the tragic simplicity and grandeur of the times and the issues at stake."
Give Perlstein this much: It is the audacious scholar who would belittle the achievement of Ronald Reagan.
If nothing else, he deserves to be made house historian at MSNBC. But if you strike at the king, you must
kill him; and this Perlstein fails to do. Another, wiser man, a registered Democrat, pronounced what seems
to me a truer epitaph of the 40th president. "I ended up thinking," Paul Nitze said, that "he was a great man."
The judgment stands.
Mr. Beran, a lawyer and a contributing editor of City Journal, is the author of among other books, Forge of
Empires, 1861-1871: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made.
Beran, Michael Knox
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Beran, Michael Knox. "The decline of liberal history." National Review, 8 Sept. 2014, p. 40. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A379641333/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4d5727e9. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A379641333
Caught in the Net: The Conflict Between
Shrimpers and Conservationists
Publishers Weekly.
242.51 (Dec. 18, 1995): p36.
COPYRIGHT 1995 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Anthony V. Margavio and Craig J. Forsyth with Shirley Laska and James Mason. Texas A & M Univ.,
$32.50 (168p) ISBN 0-89096-669-9
Superficially described here is a clash of numerous cultures--shrimpers out to defend their way of life,
environmentalists protecting endangered sea turtles, recreational fishermen hoping to increase populations
of their target species, developers and federal and state agents. The specifics are straightforward enough.
Endangered turtles get caught in shrimpers' nets and drown, so Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) were
developed to protect the turtles. Shrimpers rebelled against using TEDs and, in 1989, staged the country's
largest marine blockade in protest. What makes the case so interesting is that virtually all parties disagree on
everything else. Do TEDs reduce the amount of shrimp caught? Do they save turtles? Are the turtles really
endangered? What is the environmentalists' hidden agenda and why are some of the country's large
corporate polluters funding the effort to save the turtles? This academic study touches on many interesting
topics but the authors, sociologists all, do not get beneath the surface. Photos. (Feb.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Caught in the Net: The Conflict Between Shrimpers and Conservationists." Publishers Weekly, 18 Dec.
1995, p. 36. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A17884348/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8bcf2481. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A17884348

"Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative." Publishers Weekly, 1 May 2017, p. 47+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491575325/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Judge, Clark S. "Reagan in the wilderness." National Review, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 40+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A488311903/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Emerson, Jason. "Their finest hour." The American Spectator, Dec. 2009, p. 86+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A214396206/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Cost, Jay. "Bliss was it in that dawn." National Review, 25 Jan. 2010, p. 49. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A216030260/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. "Rendezvous with Destiny." California Bookwatch, Nov. 2013. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A352232672/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Davis, Artur. "Artur Davis." The American Spectator, Dec. 2012, p. 44+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A312404023/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Quenqua, Douglas. "Book Review: A revolutionary look at Ronald Reagan." PR Week [US], 4 Apr. 2005, p. 24. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A131119849/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Potemra, Michael. "Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All." National Review, 11 Apr. 2005, p. 49. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A145339409/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Shirley, Craig. "Book Review: Fritz the Cat; He purrs and plays his hour upon the national stage." The Weekly Standard, 20 Dec. 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A244343447/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. Beran, Michael Knox. "The decline of liberal history." National Review, 8 Sept. 2014, p. 40. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A379641333/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018. "Caught in the Net: The Conflict Between Shrimpers and Conservationists." Publishers Weekly, 18 Dec. 1995, p. 36. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A17884348/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.

• National Review Online
  https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017-04-17-0100/craig-shirley-reagan-rising
  Word count: 1379

  LATEST ARCHIVE ACCOUNT Reagan in the Wilderness Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush leave the stage following a Republican presidential debate in Nashua, N.H., February 1980. (Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images) SHARE ARTICLE ON FACEBOOKSHARE TWEET ARTICLETWEET PLUS ONE ARTICLE ON GOOGLE PLUS+1 PRINT ARTICLE EMAIL ARTICLE ADJUST FONT SIZEAA by CLARK S. JUDGE April 17, 2017, Issue Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976–1980, by Craig Shirley (Broadside, 432 pp., $29.99) Thucydides had a great advantage over later historians in telling his tale of the Peloponnesian War: As a general in the Greek army, he had been there. Craig Shirley, who is emerging as the most prolific and, in some respects, most insightful chronicler of Ronald Reagan’s political rise, shares that advantage. He was there. As a young political operative, in roles ranging from press secretary for the surprise winner of a long-shot U.S. Senate bid to a similar position with a prominent governor to heading up a pivotal independent-expenditure committee backing Reagan in 1980, again and again Shirley was perfectly placed to see and understand all that went into one of the most remarkable — and, once in office, successful — political careers in American history. In earlier volumes, Shirley detailed Reagan’s failed 1976 run for the presidency, his successful bid four years later, and his twilight years after leaving the nation’s highest office following two terms comparable in achievement only to those of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. Now Shirley has taken on the 40th president’s equivalent of Winston Churchill’s “wilderness years” — the time out of office, when many doubted his ability to return in any serious way to the stage, much less take center stage. This was the period when Reagan’s culminating run for the presidency was born. While it revolves around Reagan, Shirley’s story also focuses on three other men — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. It is widely forgotten now how bitter the division between the Ford and Reagan forces was in the mid 1970s. Shirley takes readers through a compressed account of the 1976 campaign for the GOP nomination — “the tightest two-way race for a major-party nomination in modern political history,” Newsweek (quoted by Shirley) called it — and the fall campaign that followed. Some thought that after Reagan’s strong challenge, Ford should offer him second spot on the ticket. Such was the personal animosity that Ford refused. With his brilliant, semi-extemporaneous speech on the convention’s last night and impressive appearances before state delegations over the previous week, Reagan emerged as, in the words of prominent columnist Jack Germond, the GOP’s “heir apparent.” Yet Ford was far from out of the game. He disliked Reagan, who represented a rising but, in the view of moderates, dysfunctional part of the party, and he felt that Reagan had not given his full energies to the general-election campaign, facilitating Carter’s victory. Reagan in turn was disgusted at Ford’s hardball tactics during the nomination fight and opposed Ford’s moderate-Republican approach to the Soviets, the economy, and much else. The rivalry hung over the Republican party even into the 1980 GOP national convention in Detroit. As Shirley tells it, on Carter’s inauguration day, as Ford “jetted off to California” after the ceremonies, he “told a reporter, after dining on shrimp and steak and a couple of dry martinis on the 707 that had been designated Air Force One when he was president, that he was game for another try at the White House in 1980 and that ‘I don’t want anyone to preempt the Republican presidential nomination.’” “Anyone” meant Reagan. Shirley is surprisingly sympathetic to Carter, who, like Reagan, was cut from populist cloth. As he explains: Rural populism had sprung up in Carter’s South and Reagan’s Midwest in the 1890s, and was mostly focused on the power of moneyed eastern interests, especially large banks, railroads, and manufacturers. . . . Big government was also a focus of populists’ ire, which Carter acknowledged. . . . Though some racists were involved in the populist movement in its earlier years, both Carter and Reagan abhorred racism. Shirley highlights another similarity between Carter and his successor. Washington, he says, did not understand how close Carter was to his wife, Rosalynn. They underestimated this steel magnolia, and for the oft-divorced sophisticates who made up the Washington intelligentsia, such personal closeness between married couples was deemed peculiar. . . . A cultural rift was developing between the uncomplicated Georgians and the unctuous Georgetowners, who would bedevil Carter all through [his presidency]. But though, in cultural respects, they were more like each other than like the establishment of the federal city, Reagan and Carter could not have been more unlike in politics or political ability. Reagan celebrated the American spirit and the American character and looked to restore vibrancy to an economy that was increasingly enmeshed in stagnation and inflation. Carter was soon looking to impose a heavy tax on gasoline, halt dozens of western water projects, and embrace an era of limits. Within months of Carter’s inauguration, columnist George Will would write that he had “opened a multi-front war on numerous American practices, habits, and mores.” At about the same time, Carter, who had suggested during his campaign that Nixon’s détente policy was too weak-kneed, lectured Notre Dame’s commencement audience to beware of what he called an “inordinate fear of Communism.” Soon he was calling for normalization of relations with China, Cuba, and Vietnam, even as he was cracking down on authoritarian regimes that were, nevertheless, American allies. Reagan bristled at all of this, but it was Carter’s signing of the treaty (largely negotiated under the Ford administration) turning control of the Panama Canal over to the Panamanian government that gave him an opportunity to act. Almost alone among major American political figures, he opposed the pact and campaigned against it — and though the pro-treaty forces prevailed in the Senate, Reagan won in the country. The nation had seen a man unafraid to take on all comers in defense of what he saw as right. Despite numerous hints and feints over the next two years, Ford never entered the 1980 race. Instead former congressman, ambassador, Republican National Committee chairman, and CIA chief George H. W. Bush emerged from a crowded field to become Reagan’s chief rival. In 1979, Bush campaigned vigorously and effectively while Reagan stayed off the campaign trail, skipping major events and sticking to his radio commentary, columns, and paid appearances. The reason for this reticence was John Sears, Reagan’s 1976 campaign manager and the man initially in charge of the 1980 run. Shirley is highly critical of Sears’s strategy of aloofness, which came within a breath of killing Reagan’s candidacy. Across the nation and particularly in Iowa, Bush and his impressive and equally energetic family were everywhere, with the result that Bush won the Iowa caucuses. The next big prize was New Hampshire, five weeks after Iowa. Losing patience with Sears, Reagan took control of his organization and campaigned even more intensively in the Granite State than Bush. Then, the Saturday before the primary, in a showdown debate with Bush, Reagan displayed the same steel and fire that had marked his Panama Canal advocacy. As a local newspaper editor, who was the debate’s moderator, tried to turn off his microphone over a dispute about the role in the debate of other candidates, Reagan, who was sponsoring the forum himself, sternly stopped him with the now famous remark, “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.” By Tuesday night, the nomination was all but in Reagan’s hands. As he concludes, Shirley offers this assessment of his subject: Reagan remains one of the most fascinating figures of history and the American presidency, in part because he was a constantly evolving individual. His worldview in 1964 was not his worldview in 1980. His conservatism had changed, from being simply against the intrusion of big government to the more positive advance of individual freedom. Reading Craig Shirley has become essential for any Ronald Reagan student. Reagan Rising strengthens his already high standing among Reagan biographers. – Mr. Judge is the managing director of the White House Writers Group and the chairman of the Pacific Research Institute.

  Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017-04-17-0100/craig-shirley-reagan-rising

• New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/books/review/reagan-rising-decisive-years-craig-shirley.html
  Word count: 912

  QUOTE:
  Shirley, the author of books on Reagan’s 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns, is a sure-footed and entertaining observer of the hurly-burly of national politics.

  BOOK REVIEW | NONFICTION
  How Reagan and the New Right Resuscitated the G.O.P.
  By ROMESH RATNESARMARCH 31, 2017

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  Ronald Reagan
  REAGAN RISING
  The Decisive Years, 1976-1980
  By Craig Shirley
  409 pp. Broadside Books/HarperCollins Publishers. $29.99.

  Forty years ago, the Republican Party was at a nadir. Gerald Ford had lost the presidency to a Democratic outsider named Jimmy Carter. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. The stench of Watergate hung over the G.O.P. establishment. (It didn’t help that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee operated out of a converted men’s room in the Russell Senate Office Building.) The party’s most popular national figure, Ronald Reagan, later said he was open to changing the party’s name. An analysis in The New York Times pronounced the Republicans “closer to extinction than ever before.”

  They only looked dead. Within four years, the G.O.P. picked up 49 seats in the House of Representatives and gained a majority in the Senate for the first time since 1955. In the 1980 presidential election, Reagan defeated Carter by 440 electoral votes, the worst loss ever for a sitting president.

  What happened? In “Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980,” Craig Shirley chronicles the Republicans’ emergence from the wilderness. The story goes like this: After Ford’s defeat, a guerrilla movement of conservative operatives staged an assault on the traditional economic orthodoxy of the G.O.P. Their goal was to “get rid of excessive regulations, tear down trade barriers, get government out of the business of managing the economy and most important, slash taxes to the bone.” Republican leaders soon grasped the political appeal of the insurgents’ agenda, particularly to middle-class suburban voters. The party became “more pluralistic, less interested in rank and more interested in new ideas.”

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  An assortment of long-forgotten figures receive credit for this transformation, notably Bill Brock, the former Tennessee senator who took over the Republican National Committee in 1977 and ignited its fund-raising machine. Reagan’s role was less direct. When he announced his candidacy in 1979, Reagan was the prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination, but he had done little to cultivate the grass roots, spending more time giving speeches to trade associations and business groups. To conserve Reagan’s energy, John Sears, Reagan’s campaign manager, insisted on keeping the 68-year-old former governor on ice, which fueled concerns about Reagan’s age and keyed George H.W. Bush’s upset victory in the Iowa caucuses.

  Reagan quickly recovered in New Hampshire (“I’m paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!”), fired Sears and coasted to the Republican nomination. Reagan’s genius was to sell supply-side economics in a gauzy package of optimism, nostalgia and patriotic renewal. “Our country is a living, breathing presence, unimpressed by what others say is impossible,” he said. Reagan didn’t start the conservative revolution. But it’s hard to see how it would have triumphed without him.

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  Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980
  Craig Shirley
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  Shirley, the author of books on Reagan’s 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns, is a sure-footed and entertaining observer of the hurly-burly of national politics. He has a weakness for poll numbers, horse-race punditry and clichés: “The Democratic Party was to make even more headlines. And not in a good way.” Shirley doesn’t hide his contempt for Carter or the ’70s, which he depicts as a time of near-unimaginable lassitude. The Washington establishment was “intertwined, inbred, crossbred”; the American people “had not only been mugged, but also shot, beaten, raped and left for dead by their own government.”

  “Reagan Rising” doesn’t deal with the negative impact of supply-side economics on the federal budget deficit and on the poor. But that’s for another book. It’s all too easy to forget that the 1980 election took place against the backdrop of recession, double-digit inflation, gasoline shortages, an intensifying arms race with the Soviets and the hostage crisis in Tehran. The country really was in trouble. A small-minded and demagogic politician might have exploited Americans’ anxieties and appealed to their worst instincts. Accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Detroit, Reagan said, “Can we doubt that only a divine providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely: Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the boat people of Southeast Asia, of Cuba and Haiti, the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.”

  It’s enough to make you weep. And not in a good way.

  Romesh Ratnesar is a New America fellow and the author of “Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President and the Speech That Ended the Cold War.”

• Washington Times Online
  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/11/book-review-citizen-newt-the-making-of-a-reagan-co/
  Word count: 934

  QUOTE:
  At a time when our history books and biographies are being revised at warp speed by practitioners of identity politics and a generation of academics fearful of being accused of being politically incorrect and losing their jobs, Craig Shirley stands out as an honest and highly talented biographer who is also a man of conviction.
  In this deeply researched biography, written in strong clear prose with wit and understanding, while never glossing over missteps and mistakes, Craig Shirley has given us that honest accounting.
  y John R. Coyne Jr. - - Monday, September 11, 2017
  ANALYSIS/OPINION:

  CITIZEN NEWT: THE MAKING OF A REAGAN CONSERVATIVE

  By Craig Shirley

  Thomas Nelson Books, $29.99, 544 pages

  At a time when our history books and biographies are being revised at warp speed by practitioners of identity politics and a generation of academics fearful of being accused of being politically incorrect and losing their jobs, Craig Shirley stands out as an honest and highly talented biographer who is also a man of conviction.

  His four books on Ronald Reagan, written with deep understanding of the man himself as well the principles he personified, have been widely praised by critics both left and right for their honesty and conviction. And “Citizen Newt,” he writes, “is the only factual account of the twenty-year rise of a first-generation Reaganite,” an account, he believes, that’s long overdue.

  He quotes the respected Democratic pollster John Zogby: “Operationally, what Bill Buckley was to scholarly conservatism, what Reagan was to the leadership of conservatism, what Antonin Scalia was to the legal arguments of conservatism, Newt Gingrich was to its tactical and legislative and political successes.”

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  Nancy Reagan, he writes, once commented that Mr. Gingrich played the key role in completing the Reagan Revolution: ”Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.”

  And in the elections of 1994, that’s precisely what they did, in large part by making the election national (with no national candidate) with the “Contract with America,” conceived of and masterminded by Rep. Gingrich. The contract, announced on Sept. 27 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, “contained ten specific promises that hundreds of Republicans candidates would sign and vow to enact in their first hundred days if they gained control of Capitol Hill.”

  Some called it a brilliant stroke. Others, most predictably The New York Times, called the contract a “politically preposterous prospect” and “duplicitous propaganda.”

  But as a central part of what some have called the “Gingrich Revolution,” with Mr. Gingrich leading the insurgency, the Democrats lost badly, and for the first time since 1954 — four decades — Republicans won a majority in the House.

  “In the narrative of the Republican Party, there have only been a handful of elections that were truly meaningful or that demonstrated a shift in American political history. Without a doubt, the election of 1994 was one of them.”

  A variety of factors would contribute to the loss, among them stagnation, Democratic corruption, the personal corruption of the president himself (this was also the year of Whitewater), and even the bizarre and very public failure of his wife to get the extraordinarily complex and cumbersome “Hillarycare,” (the precursor of Obamacare) enacted.

  The schematic for Hillarycare was so convoluted, writes Mr. Shirley, that one major newspaper was unable to publish it. But “The Washington Times was more successful and devoted their entire editorial page to the diagram. It terrified people as it laid out, in black and white, dozens of agencies and commissions, bureaus, departments.”

  Mr. Shirley notes that “it resembled a diagram of the Stalinist system of government.” And Newt Gingrich called it a “bureaucratic monstrosity German socialism and Italian corporatism.” (As is Obamacare, some might say.)

  Of course, Mrs. Clinton’s scheme was not in itself determinative. But it was symptomatic of why the pendulum had swung back. As Mr. Gingrich put it, the intent of Hillarycare was to seize control of the health care system and centralize power in Washington. And for the time, as the 1994 elections demonstrated, people had had enough of big government.

  Nor was it just Republicans who felt that way. “Soon, even a liberal president would be telling Congress and the nation, ‘The era of big government is over.’ ” And while there were Reaganites like Newt Gingrich, after the 1994 election serving as speaker of the House, making decisions and guiding legislation in Washington, that would remain the case.

  Mr. Gingrich no longer holds office or a governmental position. But he is still active — writing, speaking, advising public figures, among them the current president. In assessing his career and contributions, Mr. Shirley adds his name to a select list of political statesman — among them Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — “who had an effect on the national debate for more than three decades.”

  And that, Mr. Shirley concludes, “in and of itself, makes him an interesting figure, a subject worthy of an honest accounting of his rise to power and subsequent accomplishments.”

  In this deeply researched biography, written in strong clear prose with wit and understanding, while never glossing over missteps and mistakes, Craig Shirley has given us that honest accounting.

  • John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).

• American Spectator Online
  https://spectator.org/65007_reagans-last-act/
  Word count: 1291

  QUOTE:
  The story Shirley unfolds is detailed, colorful, and summons the emotions.
  By bringing together the details of Reagan’s death and the funeral that followed, a portrait made possible by extensive interviews with the Reagan family, friends, and members of the Reagan administration, Craig Shirley has compiled a fascinating and — speaking as someone who worked for Ronald Reagan — a wonderfully poignant account of Ronald Reagan’s “last act.”
  Reagan’s Last Act
  JEFFREY LORD
  Print Friendly and PDF
  December 22, 2015, 9:00 am

  In writing Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan, Craig Shirley has written the Reagan book that had to be written.

  The long time Reagan biographer (author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America and Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All ) has written a superb book that tells of the last days of the president millions of Americans had come to love and admire.

  Chapter after chapter tells the moving tale of the post-presidency for its central figure. Writes Shirley:

  Reagan had bounded out of the White House and Washington in January 1989 on a wave of good will, the affection of many of his countrymen, and an astonishing record of accomplishment. The country he’d inherited eight years earlier was broken and demoralized. The best days seemed in the past. A country that under Franklin Roosevelt had defeated the evil of Berlin and Tokyo — which in turn under Harry Truman rebuilt a war-torn European continent, created the United Nations, and asked nothing from those countries except some land on which to bury her dead — was a thing of the past….

  … In 1980 America was losing a Cold War, the American economy was in tatters, and the American spirit was all but snuffed out. Cynicism was the celebrated disposition and Jacobinism their warming fire.

  Eight years later, that country was winning the Cold War, while a humiliated and discredited Moscow was on its knees, suing for peace. Reagan believed that America operated on a higher moral plane than any other country in history, and he approached the presidency in that fashion. Like all Americans, he rejected monarchy, he rejected empire, he rejected High Toryism and neo-conservatism, and he approached the job with reverence and humility and a fundamental belief in the individual.

  The day he left the White House the American people, according to a New York Times/CBS poll, gave him a whopping 68% approval rating. He was more popular going out than he was when he came in, a feat, as Shirley points out, that eluded predecessors Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman. Only Eisenhower — the hero of D-Day — could say the same.

  Doubtless this was in part not simply because he had restored the economy by launching an economy that created 19 million jobs. As Shirley notes, National Review editor John O’Sullivan pointed to the fact that Reagan had restored “the idea of America” — leaving a country that had once again become what Reagan had always pictured it to be — a “shining city on a hill.”

  The story Shirley unfolds — of the Reagan departure from the White House, the opening of the Reagan Library, the sad realization that the physically vigorous president was suffering from Alzheimer’s and ultimately his death on June 5, 2004, and the reaction of the American people to that death — is detailed, colorful, and summons the emotions. Particularly riveting is the account of Reagan’s final hours — surrounded by family. Shirley quotes this account by Reagan daughter Patti Davis as she wrote it in The Long Goodbye, her poignant account of losing her father to his long fight with Alzheimer’s:

  My brother is … sitting beside the hospital bed; his eyes are soft and sad. His hand is resting on our father’s back — a back grown thin, the bones sharp and narrow as twigs.…My father’s breathing is even more ragged, and his closed eyes are rimmed in shadow.… As the morning goes on and sun burns through the fog, his breathing grows more threadbare. At several moments we think this is it. We tighten the circle around him, touch him lightly, tell him we love him. He inhales sharply; he makes a snoring sound and we laugh through our tears… there is nothing else we can do.… Just before one o’clock we know that this really is it. His breathing is telling us — so shallow it sounds like it can’t even be reaching his lungs. His face is angled toward my mother’s. He opens his eyes — both eyes — wide. They are focused and blue. They haven’t been blue like that in more than a year but they are now. My father looks straight at my mother, holds onto the sight of her face for a moment or two, and then gently closes his eyes and stops breathing. The room is quiet except for soft weeping; my mother whispers, “That’s the greatest gift you could have given me.”

  Now, as was said of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan belonged to the Ages.

  The portrait Shirley draws of the funeral that follows — of the difference between the pundits and the people in their reactions to Reagan’s death — is as vivid as is it is unsurprising. A useful reminder as America finds itself on the edge of a presidential campaign where voters are swarming to Donald Trump while the pundits have continually been shocked at his popularity. This isn’t the first time this set of wildly opposite assessments of a president or presidential candidate has appeared in American history and one suspects it will not be the last. Lincoln too was the subject of this kind of wide gulf separating elites from the people — ridiculed as a “baboon” (by no less than Union General George McClellan) and a “gorilla” by others, at his death the 16th president was the subject of a vast and deep national mourning, with tens of thousands in various cities turning out to witness multiple funeral processions.

  So too would it be this dichotomy for the 40th president. Writes Shirley:

  A clear pattern was emerging after Reagan’s death. The liberal elite of the national media and academia were skeptical of his stewardship of the presidency, as well as of Reagan as a man, and said so loudly. On the other hand the citizenry who “got” Reagan were nearly all complimentary. “He was a good president. He did our country great. He was a better president than (George W.) Bush,” said one mourning American citizen.”

  And so it went through the week. While one “elitist college professor” sneered that Reagan was a “racist” (Shirley notes the week would not have been complete without this kind of inanity coming from some liberal somewhere), hundreds of thousands swarmed Washington to watch Reagan’s casket pass by or stand in line to go through the Capitol rotunda as he lay in state.

  By bringing together the details of Reagan’s death and the funeral that followed, a portrait made possible by extensive interviews with the Reagan family, friends, and members of the Reagan administration, Craig Shirley has compiled a fascinating and — speaking as someone who worked for Ronald Reagan — a wonderfully poignant account of Ronald Reagan’s “last act.”

  For the Reagan fans out there, Last Act is a must — and a much needed reminder that yes, once upon a time America had a president who really did “make America great again.”

• Washington Times Online
  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/26/book-review-last-act-the-final-years-and-emerging-/
  Word count: 855

  QUOTE:
  clean and forceful prose

  y John R. Coyne Jr. - - Monday, October 26, 2015
  ANALYSIS/OPINION:

  LAST ACT: THE FINAL YEARS AND EMERGING LEGACY OF RONALD REAGAN

  By Craig Shirley

  Foreword by Lou Cannon

  Thomas Nelson, $26.99, 408 pages

  On Nov. 5, 1994, writes Craig Shirley, Ronald Reagan, having been diagnosed with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, “composed the letter read and heard round the world, announcing his affliction.”

  The handwritten letter, released immediately and addressed to “My Fellow Americans,” expressed the hope that his case could help “promote greater awareness of this condition;” the wish “there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience”; and thanks to the American people “for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president.”

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  “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”

  It’s that sunset journey of Ronald Reagan that Mr. Shirley, author of two well-received books on Ronald Reagan, traces in clean and forceful prose, from the last days in office and the return to California, through the nine and a half years during which the affliction grew, until his death on June 5, 2004, ending with a state funeral in Washington and the burial ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

  Along the way, Mr. Shirley settles some scores. “Even in his demise, the establishment often reviled him, though the people by and large embraced him.” Why? “As in most cases, Reagan had the answer himself.” Mr. Shirley repeats an anecdote told by the iconic journalist Lou Cannon, contributor of this book’s foreword and author of five highly respected books about Reagan. ” ‘Would you laugh,’ Reagan reportedly said to a newsman, ‘if I told you that I think, maybe, they see themselves and that I’m one of them? I’ve never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them.’ “

  “Most of the citizenry ‘got’ Reagan,” writes Mr. Shirley. “The elites did not.” A case in point was the notorious biography, “Dutch,” written by the British intellectual Edmund Morris, who despite unprecedented access couldn’t get his subject, couldn’t believe that Ronald Reagan was exactly what he seemed to be — a man who knew who he was and what he believed.

  In desperation, Mr. Morris fictionalized the biography and even inserted himself as a character. The result was a much-panned book, called by John Podhoretz “a work of lunacy.” But in any event, writes Mr. Shirley, Mr. Morris “was never going to write a balanced or favorable biography that would place him at risk of receiving the disapproval of liberal academia.”

  In 2001 and 2003, however, with the publication of his letters — “In His Own Hand” and “Reagan: A Life in Letters” — the widely held elitist perception of Ronald Reagan would undergo a dramatic change. These books, writes Mr. Shirley, “showed an erudite, wise, well-read, witty and solicitous man, nothing like a caricature his opponents had tried to portray him as over the years.”

  In fact, as the letters demonstrate, Ronald Reagan was very much a man of ideas with a wide-ranging intellect who, no matter how appalling the idea to his enemies, might by any definition be called intellectual

  But beyond the intellectual and ideological, the Reagan legacy relies on a solid record of achievement. When he took office, inflation was running out of control, unemployment was rising, the economy was crashing, we were in the grips of a national “malaise,” and we were losing the Cold War.

  When he left office, Mr. Shirley points out, “inflation had all been eliminated, interest rates were low, the economy was booming, unemployment was at 5.4 percent, gasoline prices had fallen dramatically, the national mood was confident, and the Soviet Union was in the final stages of losing the Cold War.”

  The record speaks for itself. Mr. Shirley sums it up: ” ‘Ronald Reagan needs no one to sing his praises,’ said Antonin Scalia. And yet thousands and maybe millions did.”

  During the week of national mourning, there was a state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral. At the end of the service, writes Mr. Shirley, as the bearers left the cathedral and started down the granite stairs, “a bright ray of sunlight sliced through the gray, overcast sky to momentarily shine on the casket of Ronald Reagan.”

  And later, the burial ceremony in California, described by Lou Cannon, “ended with the playing of ‘Taps’ as the sun sank behind the ridge of hills that extend beyond the Reagan Library to the Pacific Ocean. Ronald Reagan — actor and president — would have loved it.”

  • John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).

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