Troy, Gil. Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s.

• Author: Sherman, Matthew C.
• Position: Book review

Troy, Gil. Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. 417 pages. Cloth, $29.95.

As Americans who grew up in the 1980s are becoming more nostalgic, television programs such as VH1's I Love the '80s resurrect many facets of the decade, and, with the 2004 death and burial of Ronald Reagan, questions about the political and cultural significance of that era and Reagan are becoming more frequent. Morning in America by Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University, is a must read for anyone attempting to understand the meaning of the 1980s. Troy places the presidency of Reagan at the center of his narrative. He argues that the fortieth U.S. president "helped invent the 1980s" (p. 51) because of his speaking style that invoked a patriotic symbolism, his indirect advocacy of a consumerist culture, his effective use of a growing media market, his negotiating and image-making skills, and his surprising ability to utilize certain cultural forces for his own purposes. While Reagan is the prominent historical actor in his study, Troy extends his evaluation beyond the presidency of Reagan and illustrates the underlying racial tensions and cultural clashes that plagued the nation during the 1980s.

According to Troy, Reagan's inauguration and presidency marked a departure from the uncertainty of the 1970s and "the debut of Ronald Reagan, Inc." (p. 61). The inauguration festivities, Troy argues, emphasized the glamour of the affluent and reinforced a culture of greed and wealth. This type of life was not foreign to Americans; it was already popularized in television programs such as Dallas. Troy contends that Reagan's first year built on the image projected by the inauguration. He established an economic agenda that featured large tax cuts and slashed the budget of many social programs while preserving others such as Social Security's Old Age and Survivors Insurance. Reagan was equally aggressive in labor disputes when he fired the 11,000 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in August 1981.

In spite of these successes and his strong resurgence in the polls following his attempted assassination by John Hinckley, Troy argues that 1981 represented the climax of Reagan's presidency. During the rest of his tenure in the White House, Reagan was more popular than his political agenda and his image making blurred the lines between his vision of America and...