Paul Kengor's The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism cannot be recommended or praised highly enough. The author devotes an astonishing amount of time to detailing the president's unfailing devotion and loyalty to Poland and Pope John Paul II, a man whom Reagan once poignantly referred to as "my best friend." Kengor points out that, surprisingly, many of the popular biographies of Reagan give paltry notice to the Reagan Administration's heroic efforts to support Solidarity in Poland. Fortunately, Kengor breaks from this trend and brings the rich details of this special relationship to light. The intricacies of the unbreakable personal and spiritual bond between the pope and president are also given much deserved attention as well, more so than in any other book I've read on Reagan.
Also fascinating, in a much darker way, is Kengor's detailed review of how Senator Ted Kennedy worked assiduously throughout the 80's to ridicule and undercut, for petty political points, the arguments favoring Reagan's bold Strategic Defense Initiative. The SDI is now recognized by virtually all historians of the era as having played a most powerful role in hastening the final collapse of the USSR. Kengor also divulges the startling revelation (backed up by impeccable documentation and declassified documents) that Kennedy recruited a proxy to travel secretly to Moscow in the run-up to the '84 election to offer counsel on the best ways to exploit the president's perceived weaknesses. Kengor points out that, when it came to gratuitous criticism of the president, no other American politician was quoted more in the Soviet press than Senator Kennedy.
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