Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years

by Haynes Johnson

Overview

In this brilliantly readable book, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the Reagan decade, when America fell from dominant world power to struggling debtor nation and when optimism turned to foreboding. In human terms and living case histories, Haynes Johnson captures the drama and tragedy of an era nurtured by greed and a morality that found virtue in not getting caught.

"It is morning again in America," Reagan's campaign commercials told us, and for too long we embraced that convenient lie. Indeed, the problems that came to plague us in that decade are with us even more today, as Johnson memorably demonstrates in—his afterword, "Notes on an Era," written especially for this new paperback reissue. This book will remain a signature work of political analysis for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385422598
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/23/1992
Pages:	538
Product dimensions:	5.34(w) x 7.98(h) x 1.24(d)

About the Author

Haynes Johnson is the author of Divided We Fall: Gambling with History in the Nineties. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

	Prologue	11
	Foreword	15
Book 1	Washington, Jan. 20, 1981
1.	The Capital	19
2.	The Loser	24
3.	The Winner	41
4.	The New America	52
5.	The New Conservatism	65
6.	The Great Reaction	76
7.	The Take-over	83
8.	A New Era	93
Book 2	America, Jan. 20, 1981
9.	The Cabal	97
10.	Rustbelt	116
11.	Sunbelt	125
12.	Capital of Success	132
Book 3	The Teflon Years
13.	Electronic Culture	139
14.	Myths and Realities	153
15.	Privatizing	168
16.	God and Mammon	193
17.	The Insiders	215
18.	Deregulation	227
19.	The Ledger	235
20.	Secrets	245
21.	Haven	261
22.	April Again	275
23.	On the Hill	301
24.	The Investigation	333
25.	Olliemania	348
26.	Postmortems	366
27.	Crash	372
28.	Reckoning	387
Book 4	America, Jan. 20, 1989
29.	Capital of Success	411
30.	Sunbelt	419
31.	Rustbelt and Farmbelt	424
32.	Wall Street	431
33.	Washington	438
	Afterword	461
	Players of the Eighties	475
	Notes and Sources	483
	Bibliography	491
	Acknowledgments	501
	Index	503
	About the Author	527

What People are Saying About This

James A. Michener

We saw it all. Now Haynes Johnson tells us what it meant.

Editorial Reviews

Elegant prose, devastating insight and a keen historical perspective.

Cleveland Plain Dealer