A very good read. He gets into the weeds a bit with very specific people and practices, but good nonetheless.

Given my grandfather’s role in the book, I’m clearly biased in my enjoyment of it but it was truly excellent

While this is an interesting book and covers an interesting campaign, the author is not the most skilled writer. He tends to repeat the same points, sometimes on the same page.

The author is a strong admirer of Reagan which is fine. But he tends to gloss over certain issues. For example his only discussion of the racist wing of the Republican party and whether or not Reagan was tied this wing, is a brief discussion that amounts to saying: Reagan had black friends.

There isn't much insight here, and the discussion of the 1976 election doesn't seem to add much to Witcover's book written shortly after the 1976 election.

Yeah, another one of those where I don't agree with the politics, but it's a really fascinating story.

Of the many Reagan volumes which occupy my library, Craig Shirley's account of the 1976 campaign was inspiring - it made me feel as though I was right there on the campaign trail with Reagan. Reagan's close loss to an incumbent President Ford established the legitimacy of the conservative movement on the national stage, setting the tone for 1980. (I recently purchased Shirley's follow-up "Rendezvous with Destiny" about the 1980 campaign).

Great insight into the 1976 campaign that really changed everything for the modern GOP. A lot of this is not "news" for anyone who is familiar with Reagan, but the huge cast of real-life people (many of whom were in their 20s and 30s who are still present today in politics), the amusing anecdotes for any political junkie, and the sheer comprehension of the fact that Reagan was challenging an incumbent, albeit a very weak one who was actually never elected to any of the executive branch positions he held - VP and President - make this for a good read.

L'autore è una Vestale del Reaganismo, religione che , a più di 10 anni dalla morte del suo fondatore , è tuttora una dominante del pensiero politico americano. In questo, uno dei molti libri dedicati al suo eroe , Shurley studia, con perizia americana , la campagmna elettorale del 1976, o meglio la corsa alla "nomination" repubblicana, che vide Reagan soccombere a Ford , il quale poi perse in autunno contro Reagan, nei , per il GOP, difficili anni post-watergate.
l'autore riconosce il valore "seminale" della , per quanto ancora avccerba, campagna reaganiana , nel ridefinire e rifondare il GOP per gli anni a venire, spalancandogli poi, nel 1980 le porte della Casa Bianca
Al Reagan del 1976 mancava ancora la teoria della Supply side ecomics, pietra angolare del reaganismo economico, ma non le idee morali, vera e propria ulteriore pietra che lo ha portato ad essere , più che un Presidente, un leader morale mondiale, a tutt'oggi imprescindibile.

This is a good book. Not great, not fair, but good.
It includes a lot of detail about a campaign in which I had very little knowledge of. It's about a campaign that if a thousand moments would have occurred differently might have changed America forever.
Easy to ready. Great supporting documentation. I recommend this book.

wow, what a time it must have been when the Republican Party actually had a conservative leader! Maybe someday it'll happen again.

Ronald Reagan’s presidency has, as I’ve discovered in recent months, been a rich gold mine for writers of late 20th century American politics and history. Yet what came before the presidency and the man himself can feel elusive in those accounts. Craig Shirley’s Reagan’s Revolution, published mere months after the former president’s passing, offered a look at an often overlooked portion of Reagan’s rise: his ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination against incumbent Gerald Ford.

Shirley’s book (the start of an entire series by the author on Reagan through his presidency and passing) is an all encompassing portrait of the 1976 Republican campaign through to the convention in Kansas City that summer. One that takes in Reagan’s campaign, as evidenced by the title, from early wooing (including for a potential third party run, such was the state of the GOP post-Watergate) through the final battle for delegates at the convention. Readers are introduced not just to Reagan’s team but also that of Ford whom, still settling into the White House, found himself facing a serious and unexpected challenge from the former California governor. Shirley offers a sometimes day by day, even hour by hour, account of the decision making and back room wheeling and dealing that turned Reagan from former governor into a serious contender for the presidency. For a political junkie or historian, there’s times when Shirley is able to make the sometimes dry party process and historical facts come alive.

That attention to detail also mires the book down. The opening third or so of the book is a dry recounting of the Republican Party’s presidential electoral history for the quarter-century or so leading up to the 1976 campaign. A process that takes in Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Nixon and what Shirley decries as the party’s race to either the center or, at worst, the big government of the left. From there, the minutia of the early campaign bogs the book down even longer, as does Shirley’s repetitive (conservative) messaging. Like so much of the Reagan reading I’ve done, much of the book seems to be preaching to the choir rather than trying to make an actual objective case to future generations.

Which is understandable given how the man himself is portrayed. Reagan, despite being the notional central figure of the book, is only alive in his public appearances and campaign stops. Beyond that are only the most occasional and nearly single word explorations of his thoughts, mood, or personality as events unfolded. Indeed, one gets a better sense of Ford as an unlikely President dealing with a national campaign he seemed ill-prepared for more than of who Reagan was in 1975-76 as events unfold. The message, not the man, is what shines through.

Which is perhaps the ultimate point of Shirley’s book. Reagan lost the battle in 1976, but ultimately won the war by pushing the Republicans farther to the political right. The message and the perception won and, nearly a half-century later, we are still living with the consequences. Reagan’s Revolution documents an overlooked part of that journey, but does so often frustratingly.

Craig Shirley's "Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All" seemed like a good place to start to gain a better understanding of modern-day conservatism. This book, one of Shirley's many on the subject of Reagan, is an important link in elucidating the rise of conservativism that began with Goldwater and reached its apogee during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Although well written and thoroughly researched, my chief complaint with this otherwise excellent book is that it is far more detailed than what I was looking for. For a Reagan scholar, which I am not, I suppose Reagan's Revolution is indispensable reading. It seems to leave no detail untold about the thrilling state-by-state primary battles leading up to the 1976 Republican convention in Kansas.

Reagan came very close to clinching the Republican nomination in 1976. It would be interesting to speculate on how a Reagan victory might have changed the course of history had his presidency begun in 1977 instead of 1981. But the subject of this book is not speculative; rather, it is the story of how Reagan's bold and relentless challenge to the incumbent Ford helped to reconstitute and solidify the conservative movement.

Reagan's Revolution certainly helps the reader understand the man who boldly bucked the trend of the more moderate side of the Republican Party that grew out of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Conservative policies that ultimately prevailed during Reagan's presidency were not fully evolved at this point of his political career. But Reagan's brand of conservative populism coupled with his magnetic personality did much to displace the elitism the dominated the leadership of the Republican Party prior to 1976 election.

I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in an in-depth understanding of the 1976 election and the Republican Party. But if time or interest do not allow, one can also glean the essence of this scholarly book by reading the first few and final four chapters of the book. In sum, this book is the story of how Reagan's loss to Ford in 1976 was nonetheless the beginning of his path towards his monumental victory in 1980 and the seismic political shift that was marked by his presidency.

A fascinating inside look at the 1976 Republican Primary campaign between incumbent President Gerard R. Ford, the only appointed president in our history, and former California Governor and Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan. It tells of how Reagan came close to wresting the nomination away from Ford. Ultimately the incumbent prevailed and went on to narrowly lose the general election to Democrat Jimmy Carter, but getting to that point was historic itself: This election set the stage for Reagan's victory four years later. Detailed page-turner that tells an interesting story of how the political process works.