Whatever Ronald Reagan achieved during his political career, he did not achieve it alone. Knott (national security studies, U.S. Naval War Coll.) and Chidester (Miller Ctr. of Public Affairs, Univ. of Virginia) have put the focus on Reagan's associates, presenting excerpts from oral histories gathered by the Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, overseen by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, in cooperation with the Reagan Library. The excerpts, drawn here from 46 interviews with such figures as Howard Baker, James Baker, Michael Deaver, Alexander Haig, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Edwin Meese, Lyn Nofziger, George Shultz, and Caspar Weinberger, are arranged by chronology and skillfully knit together by the editors' own unobtrusive narrative to achieve a kind of overview of Reagan's career from the 1960s to the end of his presidency. The book is full of insights into Reagan's character and principles and the achievements and failures of the Reagan years. It also offers behind-the-scenes surprises, such as a moment of praise from Reagan for Jesse Jackson. A little high priced, but many will find it useful. (Some of the transcripts are available online at the Miller Center's web site.)

If we can be sure of one thing about the Reagan presidency, it's that it will always generate debate. Here U.S. government foreign affairs analyst Ehrman (The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan) and Flamm (history, Ohio Wesleyan Univ.; Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s) frame the debate in two extended essays of some 80 pages each, Flamm's on Reagan's foreign policy and Ehrman's on his domestic policy. Both essays are sympathetic to Reagan yet well balanced while also well written. To accompany their essays, the authors have compiled a bibliography and have included 15 brief primary documents, such as excerpts from Reagan's 1981 inaugural address and from his famous 1983 "evil empire" speech. The result, although conceived primarily for use in classrooms, is a good, concise summary of the major issues of the Reagan presidency.

What is enduring about Reagan? That's the overarching question addressed in this collection of essays, edited by Dunn (dean, Robertson Sch. of Government, Regent Univ.; The Seven Laws of Presidential Leadership) and eight other scholars, including Hayward (The Age of Reagan, below) and Knott (At Reagan's Side, above). Unfortunately, the essays are uneven and overlapping, and Dunn makes no attempt to frame them in any way. Since every book about Reagan is in some way an assessment of his legacy, a book that aims explicitly to be just that needs to be outstanding, and Dunn falls far short.

Hayward (American Enterprise Inst.; The Age of Reagan, 1964–1980) has modeled his work about one of his heroes on Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s landmark work about one of Reagan's heroes, The Age of Roosevelt. Like Schlesinger's book on FDR, Hayward's is a multipart, partisan political narrative centered on a momentous presidency. This, his second Reagan volume, shows that, like Schlesinger, he can turn a phrase, but, unfortunately, he can't turn as many as Schlesinger. His regular time-outs to scorn liberals or the "elite media," while often clever, soon seem a distraction. Titling one's history an "Age of" should enforce a certain historical broadness of view. But when Hayward writes that liberals were loud and shrill in their criticism of the 1980s birth of "whole new forms of corporate finance and capital formation," it sounds like praise in 2009. Readers might wonder what other instances of shortsightedness blemish the book. Readers friendly toward Hayward's partisanship will relish all 600-plus pages; others will soon tire of it.