THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER, BACK AFTER 20 YEARS OUT OF PRINT AS AN ENHANCED EBOOK

SPOILER ALERT! This book is not for fans of Ronald Reagan.  It is not for Sarah Palin fans.  It is not for anyone who can currently call himself or herself a Republican without feeling even a twinge of embarrassment, because everything that is repellent about that party today – the proud ignorance, the shrieking hypocrisy, the utter disregard, no, contempt, for the truth – was given a glorious send-off during the Reagan ’80s.

The Clothes Have No Emperor, first published in 1989, is for anyone who lived through this surreal era not with a sense of pride in being an American – a pride the culture tried to make one feel guilty for not experiencing – but rather of humiliation for being led by this vapid front man for the avaricious, the corrupt and the callous.

It is for anyone who was appalled to the marrow by the reality that no matter how many times Reagan forgot his lines and needed to be publicly cued, or referred to note cards containing scripts for even his most miniscule small talk, or trotted out those relentlessly recycled one-liners yet again (and received, yet again, the obligatory unearned laughs for them), the public and the media nonetheless conspired to pretend that an actor wasn’t playing the role of President of the United States.

It is most especially for anyone too young to have been politically conscious – or even alive – during those eight surreal years, and who might therefore be tempted to buy into the preposterous myth of Reagan’s greatness.

Out of print for two decades, we’re reissuing this collection of idiocy, offensiveness and absurdity to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth by providing evidence to counter the vigorously propagated fable that Ronald Reagan, Godhead to the bitterly regressive party of greed and hate that the Republicans have become, was a Great President.

Read the first section here for free, then Name Your Price – keeping in mind that it’s hard work maintaining a memory for a nation addicted to amnesia – to download the book.