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Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980's
Did America's fortieth president lead a conservative counterrevolution that left liberalism gasping for air? The answer, for both his admirers and his detractors, is often "yes." In Morning in America, Gil Troy argues that the Great Communicator was also the Great Conciliator. His pioneering and lively reassessment of Ronald Reagan's legacy takes us through the 1980s in ten year-by-year chapters, integrating the story of the Reagan presidency with stories of the decade's cultural icons and watershed moments-from personalities to popular television shows. One such watershed moment was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. With the trauma of Vietnam fading, the triumph of America's 1983 invasion of tiny Grenada still fresh, and a reviving economy, Americans geared up for a festival of international harmony that-spurred on by an entertainment-focused news media, corporate sponsors, and the President himself-became a celebration of the good old U.S.A. At the Games' opening, Reagan presided over a thousand-voice choir, a 750-member marching band, and a 90,000-strong teary-eyed audience singing "America the Beautiful!" while waving thousands of flags. Reagan emerges more as happy warrior than angry ideologue, as a big-picture man better at setting America's mood than implementing his program. With a vigorous Democratic opposition, Reagan's own affability, and other limiting factors, the eighties were less counterrevolutionary than many believe. Many sixties' innovations went mainstream, from civil rights to feminism. Reagan fostered a political culture centered on individualism and consumption-finding common ground between the right and the left. Written with verve, Morning in America is both a major new look at one of America's most influential modern-day presidents and the definitive story of a decade that continues to shape our times.
424 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 24, 2005
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243 people want to read
About the author
Gil Troy
34 books33 followersGil Troy is the author of "The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s" to be published October 6 by Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin's Press. An American presidential historian and a regular columnist for the Daily Beast, this will be his eleventh book. He is Professor of History at McGill University and will be in Washington DC this fall as a Visting Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Troy wrote The Age of Clinton on a tight deadline, speculating that Hillary Clinton just might run for President in 2016 and that Americans would be ready this fall to rethink what happened in the 1990s. He worked until 5 AM most nights, woke up at 7 (he is married with four children), jogged for an hour, then worked. He met the deadline and lost 30 pounds.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 16, 2009
Looking back on the Reagan decade, two distinct generalized oversimplifications arise. The first arose in the early 1990s. The 1980s were characterized as a decade of “vapid, hedonistic, amoral years” or capitalism, yuppies and greed on Wall Street” (16); Bill Clinton defined this era as one of “private gain over public obligations, special interests over common good, wealth and fame over work and family…a gilded age of greed, selfishness, irresponsibility, excess, and neglect.” (16)
After Reagan’s death, however, another view repeatedly came up in the punditry. Reagan’s reign was one of “renewal and idealism, of national unity and glory.” At the time, contemporaries attacked Reagan’s unilateralism and hard-line anti-communism, but after the end of the cold war, these measures seem not only vindicated, but near genius. His approach of unwavering optimism shaped the decade. To conservatives, explained CNN’s Bill Schneider, “1980 is the year one.” (17)
Troy’s book attempts to “go beyond the clashing oversimplifications.” America in the 1990s became the hedonistic decade many Reagan skeptics worried the 80s would become. Reaganism paved the way for Clintonism. (17) The 1980s were a watershed decade that promoted and made mainstream many vestiges left over from the 1960s. “Granola and blue jeans, Naderism and environmentalism, the 1980s did more to advance the 1960s agenda than to dismantle it.” (19)
- Reagan was not a revolutionary; instead, he was more conciliatory. He reconciled the 1960s liberalism with his own brand of conservatism; Reagan “stayed within the New Deal-Great Society governing status quo, fine-tuning it more than destroying it.” (333)
- Political analysis cannot fully explain Reagan’s appeal to Americans. TV shows such as Dallas and Dynasty reveal the opulence of the Reagan Era; these shows would probably not sell during Carter’s era of malaise. CNN, MTV and other cable networks spoke to the full acceptance of rampant capitalism. Lee Iococca and Donald Trump embodied the uber-successful businessman of the ‘80s, and Ben and Jerry, former hippies turned businessmen, were the ultimate 60s to 80s transformation.
- Motion Pictures rallied against communism and struggled to redeem America from Vietnam. Rambo, Red Dawn, and similar films touted militarism, so much so that G.I. Joe toys (and a cartoon) returned to popular culture. Back to the Future reveals a nostalgia for the 1950s, as did the return of ‘50s themed doo-wop in popular music. The 1983 film the Big Chill also testififes to the reconciliation of 60s rebellion and Reagan conservatism.
Agrees with:
- McElvaine’s The Great Depression, in that Reagan redistributed wealth back to the elites and further impoverished the lower classes.
After Reagan’s death, however, another view repeatedly came up in the punditry. Reagan’s reign was one of “renewal and idealism, of national unity and glory.” At the time, contemporaries attacked Reagan’s unilateralism and hard-line anti-communism, but after the end of the cold war, these measures seem not only vindicated, but near genius. His approach of unwavering optimism shaped the decade. To conservatives, explained CNN’s Bill Schneider, “1980 is the year one.” (17)
Troy’s book attempts to “go beyond the clashing oversimplifications.” America in the 1990s became the hedonistic decade many Reagan skeptics worried the 80s would become. Reaganism paved the way for Clintonism. (17) The 1980s were a watershed decade that promoted and made mainstream many vestiges left over from the 1960s. “Granola and blue jeans, Naderism and environmentalism, the 1980s did more to advance the 1960s agenda than to dismantle it.” (19)
- Reagan was not a revolutionary; instead, he was more conciliatory. He reconciled the 1960s liberalism with his own brand of conservatism; Reagan “stayed within the New Deal-Great Society governing status quo, fine-tuning it more than destroying it.” (333)
- Political analysis cannot fully explain Reagan’s appeal to Americans. TV shows such as Dallas and Dynasty reveal the opulence of the Reagan Era; these shows would probably not sell during Carter’s era of malaise. CNN, MTV and other cable networks spoke to the full acceptance of rampant capitalism. Lee Iococca and Donald Trump embodied the uber-successful businessman of the ‘80s, and Ben and Jerry, former hippies turned businessmen, were the ultimate 60s to 80s transformation.
- Motion Pictures rallied against communism and struggled to redeem America from Vietnam. Rambo, Red Dawn, and similar films touted militarism, so much so that G.I. Joe toys (and a cartoon) returned to popular culture. Back to the Future reveals a nostalgia for the 1950s, as did the return of ‘50s themed doo-wop in popular music. The 1983 film the Big Chill also testififes to the reconciliation of 60s rebellion and Reagan conservatism.
Agrees with:
- McElvaine’s The Great Depression, in that Reagan redistributed wealth back to the elites and further impoverished the lower classes.
January 25, 2022
I've been reading it off and on for so long Im not sure I remember the beginning. Pretty fascinating and I learned some things. Some things I knew vaguely and this covered more in depth. But he's still problematic and did some real bad stuff.
January 15, 2026
Thorough portrait of the 80s year by year from a political perspective, particularly centered on the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the transformation of the country. Quite a dated book, but interesting to see the beginnings of modern times and current trends in America, particularly the republican drive for deregulation and lower taxes, free economy driving Wall Street against the backdrop of the technological revolution of the personal computer as the workforce and industries evolved to new ways of doing things. As always, during such periods of change, there are winning sectors and losing sectors - one wonders at the similaries of the rise of computing in the 80s to the current explosive growth of AI across and into all sectors in a similar period of deregulation and tax simplification, where conservatives and liberals remain entrenched in polar opposition with each camp looking at the same picture optimistically or pessimistically.
In the end, not sure worth reading unless you're a political history buff.
// Quotes
By most indicators, it was an amazing recovery, “the greatest economic expansion in history,” Reagan’s economics guru Martin Anderson insisted. Inflation declined and job creation soared. Interest rates dropped and the stock market boomed. Sixty months of uninterrupted growth from 1982 to 1987 produced twenty trillion dollars of new wealth. More than seventeen million new jobs would emerge during Reagan’s presidency, while European job growth stagnated. The new service economy’s “stunning” triumph added “$8,000 billion worth of new technology, 16,000 new shopping malls and three billion square feet of new office space (nearly as much again as existed in 1980),” according to the New York Times.
The budget deficit soared from $914.3 billion in 1980 to $2 trillion by 1986. Interest payments servicing the debt became the second largest federal budget item after defense. By 1984 the federal government spent 24 percent of the gross national product, and, thanks to the tax cuts, tax revenues covered only 19 percent of GNP. The government had to close the gap by issuing bonds, often sold to overseas investors—in 1986 Japanese investors purchased $93 billion in U.S. bonds. This flood of treasury bills elevated interest rates and depressed the dollar. The United States, the world’s biggest creditor in 1980, became the world’s biggest debtor, with a trade deficit beginning in 1983 and mushrooming thereafter. Interest payments averaged $20 billion yearly. One economist, Fred Bergsten, would joke, “We finally understand the true meaning of supply-side economics: foreigners supply most of the goods and all of the money.”
Critics worried about a middle class doubly squeezed, with the wealthy monopolizing too high a percentage of the nation’s assets while too many good jobs disappeared or went abroad. Democrats charged that too many of the new jobs were short-term, service-oriented jobs, rather than long-term, manufacturing jobs, especially as transportation and communication advances encouraged outsourcing work to nonunionized, Third World workers.
The downtown revitalization projects and yuppie gentrification projects that generated such enthusiasm among urban planners wiped out the housing stock of thousands of poor people.
The rights revolution of the 1960s and blind faith in the latest social science theories during the 1970s moved thousands of mental patients out of hospitals, which had often been harsh and neglectful. Unfortunately, many ended up wandering the even meaner streets, constituting up to a third of the homeless population.
Conservatives celebrated a flexible free-enterprise economy naturally evolving from manufacturing toward a “postindustrial” service society; liberals mourned the loss of a manufacturing base with the same pessimistic conservatism that had nineteenth-century populists mourning their farms.
Consumerism, materialism, individualism, entrepreneurship, the antigovernment backlash, the information age, capitalism itself, the end of the cold war all helped dissolve traditional ties and certainly fostered an American hedonism.
Democrats did not understand that the “deindustrialization of America” predated and transcended Reagan. America was evolving toward an information-age economy. Democrats were also too protective of status quo, heavily unionized manufacturing jobs to appreciate that in Europe, where Democratic-style policies kept the economy addicted to highly paid unionized jobs, unemployment rates skyrocketed and the economy stagnated. Democrats tended to count the 351,000 “McJobs” the service economy created between 1983 and 1986, while ignoring the 3 million new, lucrative, often satisfying “professional-managerial” positions the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded.
Republicans did not acknowledge that while Americans were better off than they had been under Carter, there had been more job growth in the 1970s. Besides, many American families were doing better partially because so many women had entered the workforce. By May 1984 over half of all adult women worked. Americans were working harder and longer while earning only a little more, on the whole. Republicans tended to discount the economic, political, and cultural impact of so much wealth being in the hands of so few. By 1989 the top 1 percent of households was worth more than the bottom 90 percent, meaning that 834,000 households worth nearly $6 trillion balanced 84 million households worth nearly $5 trillion.
“Our nation is a nation of immigrants,” Reagan proclaimed—articulating a once-heretical conception that had been injected into the American psyche. “More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.”
In the end, not sure worth reading unless you're a political history buff.
// Quotes
By most indicators, it was an amazing recovery, “the greatest economic expansion in history,” Reagan’s economics guru Martin Anderson insisted. Inflation declined and job creation soared. Interest rates dropped and the stock market boomed. Sixty months of uninterrupted growth from 1982 to 1987 produced twenty trillion dollars of new wealth. More than seventeen million new jobs would emerge during Reagan’s presidency, while European job growth stagnated. The new service economy’s “stunning” triumph added “$8,000 billion worth of new technology, 16,000 new shopping malls and three billion square feet of new office space (nearly as much again as existed in 1980),” according to the New York Times.
The budget deficit soared from $914.3 billion in 1980 to $2 trillion by 1986. Interest payments servicing the debt became the second largest federal budget item after defense. By 1984 the federal government spent 24 percent of the gross national product, and, thanks to the tax cuts, tax revenues covered only 19 percent of GNP. The government had to close the gap by issuing bonds, often sold to overseas investors—in 1986 Japanese investors purchased $93 billion in U.S. bonds. This flood of treasury bills elevated interest rates and depressed the dollar. The United States, the world’s biggest creditor in 1980, became the world’s biggest debtor, with a trade deficit beginning in 1983 and mushrooming thereafter. Interest payments averaged $20 billion yearly. One economist, Fred Bergsten, would joke, “We finally understand the true meaning of supply-side economics: foreigners supply most of the goods and all of the money.”
Critics worried about a middle class doubly squeezed, with the wealthy monopolizing too high a percentage of the nation’s assets while too many good jobs disappeared or went abroad. Democrats charged that too many of the new jobs were short-term, service-oriented jobs, rather than long-term, manufacturing jobs, especially as transportation and communication advances encouraged outsourcing work to nonunionized, Third World workers.
The downtown revitalization projects and yuppie gentrification projects that generated such enthusiasm among urban planners wiped out the housing stock of thousands of poor people.
The rights revolution of the 1960s and blind faith in the latest social science theories during the 1970s moved thousands of mental patients out of hospitals, which had often been harsh and neglectful. Unfortunately, many ended up wandering the even meaner streets, constituting up to a third of the homeless population.
Conservatives celebrated a flexible free-enterprise economy naturally evolving from manufacturing toward a “postindustrial” service society; liberals mourned the loss of a manufacturing base with the same pessimistic conservatism that had nineteenth-century populists mourning their farms.
Consumerism, materialism, individualism, entrepreneurship, the antigovernment backlash, the information age, capitalism itself, the end of the cold war all helped dissolve traditional ties and certainly fostered an American hedonism.
Democrats did not understand that the “deindustrialization of America” predated and transcended Reagan. America was evolving toward an information-age economy. Democrats were also too protective of status quo, heavily unionized manufacturing jobs to appreciate that in Europe, where Democratic-style policies kept the economy addicted to highly paid unionized jobs, unemployment rates skyrocketed and the economy stagnated. Democrats tended to count the 351,000 “McJobs” the service economy created between 1983 and 1986, while ignoring the 3 million new, lucrative, often satisfying “professional-managerial” positions the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded.
Republicans did not acknowledge that while Americans were better off than they had been under Carter, there had been more job growth in the 1970s. Besides, many American families were doing better partially because so many women had entered the workforce. By May 1984 over half of all adult women worked. Americans were working harder and longer while earning only a little more, on the whole. Republicans tended to discount the economic, political, and cultural impact of so much wealth being in the hands of so few. By 1989 the top 1 percent of households was worth more than the bottom 90 percent, meaning that 834,000 households worth nearly $6 trillion balanced 84 million households worth nearly $5 trillion.
“Our nation is a nation of immigrants,” Reagan proclaimed—articulating a once-heretical conception that had been injected into the American psyche. “More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.”
February 8, 2016
I think the author's conclusion lays out his case far better than his introduction, which felt like it was pulling in half a dozen directions. But this topsy-turvy bookending doesn't prevent the rest of the book from being an interesting and thought-provoking synthesis of the 1980s and the Ronald Reagan Presidency. It brought to the surface a great many memories of that time, and it provides a thorough & substantive analysis of its subject matter without ever wearing out its welcome.
August 4, 2010
Interesting information but Troy's style reads like a series of bad newspaper headlines. I wanted to continue because his premise sounded intriguing but I couldn't cope with the style. His citation style was incredibly frustrating and seemed designed intentionally so.
November 8, 2018
I was looking for a history of the 80s, something along the lines of Halberstam's The Fifties, a big request, I know. After some research, I decided on Morning in America, not exactly what I was looking for, but the best recommended. I was happy that this was not a walk down 80s kitschy memory lane. Yes, there were many references of pop culture, but I did get a bit more of the history I was looking for.
The major issue I had with the book is the author's obvious adoration for Reagan, this is not an unbiased assessment. Reagan is elevated to near political god status, a man who could do nearly no wrong, and any wrong was really the fault of others or circumstance. This position taken by Troy makes Morning in America a less than reliable historical work because it lacks impartiality. I don't doubt many of the facts presented, but the interpretation is suspect.
As a general overview of the 80s, this isn't bad, but as a fulfilling history, this book misses the mark.
The major issue I had with the book is the author's obvious adoration for Reagan, this is not an unbiased assessment. Reagan is elevated to near political god status, a man who could do nearly no wrong, and any wrong was really the fault of others or circumstance. This position taken by Troy makes Morning in America a less than reliable historical work because it lacks impartiality. I don't doubt many of the facts presented, but the interpretation is suspect.
As a general overview of the 80s, this isn't bad, but as a fulfilling history, this book misses the mark.
April 6, 2018
I guess I was hoping for a more traditional book on Reagan the person and leader. Good as a piece of cultural history.
March 4, 2025
Sadly, they were kind of the moment. But Ronald, come on man. Really?
May 27, 2013
See official review: http://www.bookscompletemeunlimited.c...
Reagan's legacy continues to permeate American society. Whether you have fond memories of the 80s or not, various movements from that decade continue to have an impact today. The cultural, political, and economic impact of the Reagan years are explored in this work. In fact, the author attempts to be as comprehensive as possible.
Though I am not usually fond of such recent history, this decade history is quite good. I recommend it as a general overview of the Reagan years. Luckily, it is not entirely a political history. There is a tremendous amount of cultural history woven into the work, which makes for a fascinating read.
Reagan's legacy continues to permeate American society. Whether you have fond memories of the 80s or not, various movements from that decade continue to have an impact today. The cultural, political, and economic impact of the Reagan years are explored in this work. In fact, the author attempts to be as comprehensive as possible.
Though I am not usually fond of such recent history, this decade history is quite good. I recommend it as a general overview of the Reagan years. Luckily, it is not entirely a political history. There is a tremendous amount of cultural history woven into the work, which makes for a fascinating read.
June 18, 2020
This was one of three required books for a course I took on the 1980's, primarily through the lens of Reagan's presidency and social change. The book is not a bad choice for that purpose. It is very generous to the moderate Reagan, whether or not that was how the man actually was.
March 7, 2011
Given to me by a great professor. He tried to convert me. It didn't work. But this is an evenhanded treatment of Reagan's presidency.
June 21, 2012
Sympathetic treatment of the 40th president and his times. Told from the perspective of a cultural historian. Fine narrative history; engaging, elegant prose.
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May 13, 2018Not really a fan of The Gipper, but not many books on the 80s besides video game hint books...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews