Historian H.W. Brands is certainly not the first writer to try in vain to decipher what made Ronald Reagan tick, but his compendious biography of the Gipper has little new to offer.
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No politician in recent memory has been as inscrutable as President Ronald Reagan. He was an actor by training, had years of experience as a corporate pitchman, would often say one thing and quietly do the opposite, and with few exceptions rarely developed new close friendships.
