As a general (non-expert) reader who came to political maturity during Reagan's presidency, I felt a profound concurrence with the last chapter of the book, "Reaganism and the Neokitsch Aesthetic." It led me to reflect that perhaps the most enduring legacy of Reaganism is the sophisticated, multi-pronged effort to both charm and frighten citizens into deserting their posts, leaving governance to specialists of whom we are supposed to expect very little. This well-written chapter opened my eyes to the charm offensive and several ways it worked. The book as a whole is leftist, at least according to the provincial, navel-gazing standards of the world's only superpower. It instilled a profound dissatisfaction with my country's politics and a bleak sense of the future. (American leftists excel at diagnosis, but treatment and cure are another matter entirely.)