The Reagan era — a time when the American Dream got a perm, Wall Street got high on its own supply, and compassion was drowned in a jacuzzi at Studio 54.

 This was the decade when *greed* wasn’t just good — it was federally endorsed. When your country told you that if you weren’t rich, healthy, or white with a good TV smile, you probably deserved whatever hell you were living through. AIDS? Ignore it. Crack epidemic? Criminalize it. Union workers? Fire ‘em. Trees? Cut ‘em. Poor people? Trickle something on them and call it economics.  Ronald Reagan sold optimism the way televangelists sell salvation: loud, rehearsed, and with a suspicious bank account offshore. “It’s morning in America,” he beamed, like some kind of demented cheerleader for a dying empire — while actual Americans were waking up to layoffs, homelessness, and lethal indifference.

 Don’t have healthcare? Bootstraps. Can’t afford college? Bootstraps. Your rent is half your income? Pull harder, baby.

 Meanwhile, Nanc...

The Queen is the most famous figure in our national life and arguably in international life, too; her face is among the most reproduced images in history. This is probably the best book ever written about QEII, but honestly, it's only for the completists. It's gigantic - I got the updated version from 2022 - and there's so much minutiae and so many effin' personages involved that it would probably confuse most people. I genuinely enjoyed it but I have a thing for history.  "As of this writing, there is just one significant royal record which is not QEII's. That is due to change. In May 2024, she will have overtaken both King Bhumibol of Thailand and France's boy king, Louis XIV, to become history's longest reigning sovereign. Yet, as explained in this book, she has no interest in fame. And so after years of familiarity, we are still left asking the question: 'What is she really like?' It is the great paradox of Elizabeth the II, and it has serve...