Rendezvous with destiny

de Craig Shirley

As late as Election Day, headlines across the country blared that the race was "too close to call." Even on the verge of his historic triumph in the 1980 presidential election, political observers continued to underestimate Ronald Wilson Reagan. In Rendezvous with Destiny, the long-awaited follow-up to his widely praised account of Reagan's insurgent 1976 presidential campaign, Craig Shirley tells the incredible behind-the-scenes story of Reagan's improbable run to the White House in 1980 - of how the "too close to call" election became a landslide victory over incumbent Jimmy Carter and independent candidate John Anderson. And this, Shirley shows, was no ordinary election. It dramatically altered the course of American - and world - history. Reagan's victory gave rise to a new generation of conservatism, ended liberalism's half-century reign of dominance, reversed the second-worst economic crisis in American history, and led to the demise of the mighty Soviet Union.