The front jacket for the hardcover edition of Bob Spitz’s tome, Reagan: An American Journey, shows its presumably heroic subject in a studly pose, leaning up against a rural white picket fence. The book itself is divided into four parts, corresponding to stages of Reagan’s life: “Dutch,” “Ronnie,” “Governor,” and “Mr. President.” And two photograph sections break up the nearly nine-hundred pages into neat thirds. The pictures alone seem to tell a riveting tale of boot-strapped success and uncomplicated grace. One could be forgiven, therefore, for dismissing the work as an attempt at best-selling hagiography.

Spitz, however, is up to something more interesting. It is not so much “Reagan” as “an American journey” that proves the operative title throughout. The president no doubt remains in sharp focus as the all-American par excellence. But he emerges as a vessel in which a less comforting story of the United States can be told. And if this story reaches its highest pitch during Reagan’s years in the Oval Office, it must also be understood at its roots, when the working-class lifeguard from the pastoral Midwest first began to morph into the charismatic prophet of America’s rightward lurch.