The Simplifier - Reagan - The third volume of Rick Perlstein’s history of modern conservatives
If anyone is able to buy a copy of Rick Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge, we’ll know that Craig Shirley lost. Last week, in advance of the Tuesday release of the third volume of Perlstein’s conservative movement history, right-winger Shirley claimed that Perlstein had plagiarized his book about Ronald Reagan’s 1976 primary challenge to President Gerald Ford. Shirley was asking for every copy of The Invisible Bridge to be destroyed, and for $25 million to be kindly deposited in his bank account.
Perlstein’s publisher did not budge. Shirley was credited in the book, after all, for saving the new author “3.76 months in research,” and the endnotes (published online, not in the book) slathered him with attributions. Simon and Schuster quickly rebutted the charges. The “plagiarism” story rocketed around the righty Internet anyway. The Daily Caller phoned up Shirley, who called the new book “a liberal’s version of conservative history.” The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, who had written the foreword to Shirley’s book, dutifully warned readers of the new controversy.
It was already plenty surreal, and then Roger Stone showed up. On Twitter, the Republican dirty trickster (whose avatar shows off his Richard Nixon back tattoo) asked whether the “lefty propagandist” was guilty of plagiarism. On Facebook, Stone continued his Purple Rose of Cairo act, walking from his history pages onto Perlstein’s wall, challenging and tweaking him. “Everyone in this controversy is a partisan,” wrote Stone, “but then, controversy sells books.”
This just isn’t what happens when Rick Perlstein releases a book. The first in his series, 2001’s Before the Storm, was praised by William F. Buckley. George Will called it “the best book yet on the social ferments that produced Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential candidacy”—in a largely positive review of Perlstein’s second book, Nixonland, which became a best-seller. What changed? This time Perlstein is writing about Ronald Reagan.
Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan—Perlstein has moved from covering a minor saint, to a martyr, to God.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/books/2014/08/rick_perlstein_s_book_on_reagan_the_invisible_bridge_reviewed.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
