Ever since Ronald Reagan became governor of California, we have relied on two native informants to understand him: Joan Didion and Mike Davis. For Didion, he was—as a ward of Hollywood, then of US corporations such as General Electric; and finally of state and federal governments—one of the few Americans of his generation to experience something approaching luxury socialism. For Davis, Reagan’s ascent told a grimmer story of California’s ecological and economic depredation—of a predatory age that transferred wealth upwards and devastated the land along the way. Rick Perlstein engages with these portraits of Reagan and Reaganism in the fourth volume of his study of the rise of conservatism, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980. But he does much more as well: He offers a panoramic view of the many movements and individuals who helped enable Reagan’s rise. As Thomas Meaney argues in his essay-review of Reaganland, “Perlstein surveys the wider political landscape of which Reagan himself is but one feature.” This book “not only teems with political operatives and hustlers—on the right, center, and left—but also suggests that the most potent forces of American political change lie outside formal politics.” It is an especially striking message, Meaney concludes, especially in a time when “the American left is more invested in electoralism and its promise than at any point since the 1940s.” Read “The Movement President”