Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire

Conservatives lionize former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Baier (chief political anchor, Fox News) and cowriter Whitney conform to this convention while skirting the thickest of the lacquer with which Reaganites coat their hero. As in 2017's Three Days in January, their superior biography of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Baier and Whitney take a single crucial event in their subject's life—in this case, Reagan's visit to Moscow in 1988—and use it to illuminate the character of an American president. The authors are happily pro-Reagan, downplaying the administration's less-than-stellar situations, such as the Iran-Contra scandal. They spout hyperbole, titling one section "Reagan's destiny" and describing 1980s U.S.-Soviet relations as the "endgame of a decades-long battle for the future of civilization." They indulge in glittering generalities and weasel words, including phrases such as "many judged that…" On the other hand, they capture Reagan's fraught but mutually warm relationship with Soviet reformist premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and they convey a good sense of Reagan's sunny yet aloof personality and leadership style.