Rigorous examination of Ronald Reagan's intuitive sense of reality as it was expressed chiefly in his presidential speeches. Justin D. Garrison argues that Reagan's chimeric imagination contains many dubious elements that present serious problems for politics.

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States

The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews in Budapest between 1944 and 1945. He is recognised by the Israeli state as one of the Righteous among the Nations. This book examines both Wallenberg’s activities during the Holocaust and the ways posterity has remembered him. It explores secret Swedish diplomacy and how Wallenberg was transformed over time into a Swedish brand. It considers the political aspects of Wallenberg’s Americanisation and analyses his portrayals in music, film and television. Representations of Wallenberg as a monument are discussed with special reference to Swedish and Hungarian examples. The question of how Wallenberg’s memory can and should be kept alive in future is an essential issue related to the politics of memory.

A stirring chronicle of the spiritual life of a nation, Prayer in America shows how the faith of Americans—from the founding fathers to corporate tycoons, from composers to social reformers, from generals to slaves—was an essential ingredient in the formation of American culture, character, commerce, and creed. Prayer in America brings together the country’s hymns, patriotic anthems, arts, and literature as a framework for telling the story of the innermost thoughts of the people who have shaped the United States we know today. Beginning with Native Americans, Prayer in America traces the prayer lives of Quakers and Shakers, Sikhs and Muslims, Catholics and Jews, from their earliest days in the United States through the aftermath of 9/11, and the 2004 presidential election. It probes the approach to prayer by such diverse individuals as Benjamin Franklin, Elvis Presley, Frank Lloyd Wright, J. C. Penney, P. T. Barnum, Jackie Robinson, and Christopher Columbus. It includes every president of the United States as well as America’s clergy, immigrants, industrialists, miners, sports heroes, and scientists. Prayer in America shows that without prayer, the political, cultural, social, and even economic and military history of the United States would be vastly different from what it is today. It engages in a thoughtful, timely examination of the modern debate over public prayer and how the current approach to prayer bears deep roots in the philosophies of the country’s founding fathers, a subject which remains distinct from the debate over church and state.