The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses, 1981-1986

by George F. Will

Book Overview

Offers observations on the Reagan era, with insights into foreign policy and domestic affairs plus profiles of David Stockman, Lee Iacocca, Jesse Jackson, and Henry Kissinger.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0029344301
• ISBN13: 9780029344309
• Release Date: November 1986
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 430 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Will's Columns During the Reagan Era

"The Morning After" is the third collection of George Will's columns. It begins in 1981, the year Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president and the year that conservatives had to make fateful choices about taxes, spending, and the budget. Will has a couple of surprising columns in which he asserted that America was undertaxed. The large budget deficits did begin under Reagan, but as David Frum pointed out in Dead Right, Reagan's numbers (including the increase in defense spending) really would have added up if government spending had merely risen at the same rate as inflation during his presidency. The deficits did not result because the country was undertaxed; they came about as a result of Dionysian spending. A theme in several of the columns was the degree to which political correctness was already rearing its ugly head during the first half of the Eighties. Conservative speakers were shouted down on college campuses, and colleges were afraid to do things that members of designated victim groups might not like. The term "political correctness" may not have been famous until the early Nineties, but the tactics were already being used years earlier. The book includes columns on many other topical political and cultural issues of 1981-1986, and, of course, contains a few baseball columns. There is also a great column on the impropriety of the "stall" offense (since made obsolete by the shot clock) in college basketball, and five of Will's always-fun year-end columns are here. Will might be at his best in the columns that he writes about one specific individual, and this volume contains his columns about such diverse figures as Martin Luther, Lee Iacocca, Leonid Brezhnev, Bruce Springsteen, Whittaker Chambers, Charles Dickens, and William F. Buckley. If anyone wished to know what was going on in America during the Reagan years, they would do well to read this collection written by one the country's best commentators.

Compelling and provactive

A compilation of articles from reknowned conservative commentator George F. Will. Will presents us with plethera of political and social issues of the 80's agrued eloquently and presuasively. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the social and political melieu of the 1980's. A true classic.

Fascinating

Whatever your views, this book should make you think about what they are and why you hold them. His discussions relating to abortion (especially of the permanently disabled) is particularly poignant, since his son has Down's syndrome. He becomes particularly vocal where his son is concerned (what father wouldn't?) and makes a undeniable case against abortion. A must read for any politically aware person.