Ronald Reagan, Peacemaker: Genealogy of a Myth

Doug Rossinow will scrutinize the way that Reagan's role as president has been presented in recent scholarship, and will critique in particular the now-standard refrain that Reagan was a "nuclear abolitionist" whose abhorrence of the prospect of nuclear war was the foundation of his distaste for the doctrine of "Mutual Assured Destruction," and laid the basis for his arms-reduction agreements with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. There are weaknesses in the evidence and serious problems with the handling of evidence accompanying many iterations of this interpretation of Reagan's stance. The record from the 1980s and before, examined carefully and in the context of Reagan's aggressive foreign policy and extreme anticommunism, reveals a less pacific and less coherent picture than recent historians have rendered.