Frances FitzGerald

Initially a populist rebellion against the established Protestant churches, evagelicalism became the dominant religious force in the country before the Civil War, but the northerners and southerners split over the issue of slavery. After the Civil War, the northern evangelicals split, eventually causing a conflict between fundamentalists and modernists. Only after the second World War would conservative evangelicalism gain momentum, thanks in large...

"Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century." "The idea that America should have an impregnable shield against nuclear weapons was Reagan's invention. His famous Star Wars speech, in which he promised us such a shield and called upon scientists to produce it, gave rise...