“... William Casey, the director of the CIA at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal. His nomination by Ronald Reagan to head the CIA was thwarted by suspicions of his complicity in covert operations in Nicaragua. The elder Bush later renominated him and got him through. Gates would have struck George H.W. Bush as a sound appointment because he knew the ...”

“... cost Schlesinger many of his friends on the left, but it won him new admirers, including the actor Ronald Reagan, who later said Schlesinger’s lurid fresco of the Hollywood communist underworld contributed to his political awakening. But Schlesinger’s anti-communism during the 1940s was still tempered by a commitment to democratic socialism. In a 1947 ...”

“... groups bear some responsibility for this, the new toughness of politicians like Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has tended to induce the very feelings that should have been avoided: the inane hope of survival in a major nuclear exchange that has spec builders working up their shelter plans for worried housewives, and the silly defeatism that caves in ...”

“... should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. It’s a story line that began with Ronald Reagan, who used to talk about a completely fictitious black ‘welfare queen’ driving a Cadillac (probably stolen from Ann Romney) and collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in government checks, and the ‘big buck’ on the supermarket line ...”

“... of historical mysticism among American conservatives, those who liked to think of presidents like Ronald Reagan and – not that anyone wants to remember this now – George W. Bush inheriting the mantle of Winston Churchill. Robert Conquest, presenting a relatively sophisticated, unmilitaristic and tolerant version of the Anglosphere (it included ...”

“... as Andy Warhol called his famous persona, are mingling, too, with many who are long dead. Ronald Reagan and Meryl Streep, Bette Davis and Robert De Niro jostle closely together in several large spaces, chambers for different sins in the afterlife – for vamping, sharp-shooting, taxi-driving – while a flickering crowd comes and goes in an ...”

“... account. Where Gaddis sees the fall of Communism overwhelmingly in terms of the personal roles of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and the triumph of American democracy and capitalism, Westad points out that for a decade before the Soviet Union collapsed, the decision of the Chinese Communists to abandon socialist economics and move to a form of ...”

“... We may be that generation that sees Armageddon.Ronald Reagan, 1980 My brother, my bright twin, Prochorus, I think his bright future’s been wrecked. When we’ve both got our lives before us he’s gone and joined this weird sect. He sits in a cave with his guru, a batty old bugger called John and scribbles on scrolls stuff to scare you while the rabbi goes rabbiting on ...”

“... her pet tortoise’s and, a quarter of a century later, her father’s. On the second occasion Ronald Reagan gave the memorial address. Her father was Edgar Bergen, whose ventriloquist dummy, Charlie Macarthy, was the star of American radio before the war. The early chapters, which deal with the triangular relationship between father, daughter and ...”

“... James Earl Carter is left with ‘major problems for his administration in an election year’. Ronald Reagan does not appear, so Charles Chaplin remains single-handed to represent the achievements of the 20th-century cinema. Most entries are sober and judicious accounts of important public careers, the sort of thing that serves for obituary notices in ...”

“... thinking of the supposed masters, the men who own these women: Albert Dekker in the Siodmak movie, Ronald Reagan (in his last film role) in the Siegel. They have a strange, almost wistful tone of admiration and resentment when they speak of their glamorous partners, as if owning them were not enough. As if the women would always be ahead, even when ...”

“... to abolish the free press, so much as to turn its cycles of hysteria to his own advantage. When Ronald Reagan came to power, many liberals were convinced he would bring forth the nuclear apocalypse; they were relieved to learn he only wanted to do away with the unions. It would be easier to respect Snyder’s call for resistance if it matched the ...”

“... past, when the EPA failed in its duties, private litigation was brought to secure compliance. When Ronald Reagan appointed Anne Gorsuch (mother of the newest Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch) to head the EPA, he asked if she was willing to ‘bring it to its knees’. She slashed its budget and, as the New York Times put it, ‘sabotaged the agency’s ...”

“... in 1976, the only way to be elected President was to cast oneself as a political ‘outsider’. Ronald Reagan revived the Cold War during his first term in office, but this did not help reanimate liberalism. Reagan fashioned a potent political appeal from anti-liberalism – lower taxes, thinly-disguised ...”

“... is borrowed from American politics, to give the reader a recognisable stock character. This is Ronald Reagan, here renamed President O’Reilly. (David Lodge’s version, ‘Ronald Ruck’, was funnier.) D.M. Thomas offers a farcical interview with President O’Reilly in which the old man is so confused that he can ...”