The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986

by George F. Will

Offers observations on the Reagan era, with insights into foreign policy and domestic affairs plus profiles of David Stockman, Lee Iacocca, Jesse Jackson, and Henry Kissinger

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Cultural, Essays

430 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 1986

About the author

George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics. By the mid 1980s the Wall Street Journal reported he was "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann (1899–1975).

Will served as an editor for National Review from 1972 to 1978. He joined the Washington Post Writers Group in 1974, writing a syndicated biweekly column, which became widely circulated among newspapers across the country and continues today. His column is syndicated to 450 newspapers. In 1976 he became a contributing editor for Newsweek, writing a biweekly backpage column until 2011.

Will won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "distinguished commentary on a variety of topics" in 1977.[6] Often combining factual reporting with conservative commentary, Will's columns are known for their erudite vocabulary, allusions to political philosophers, and frequent references to baseball.

Will has also written two bestselling books on the game of baseball, three books on political philosophy, and has published eleven compilations of his columns for the Washington Post and Newsweek and of various book reviews and lectures.

Will was also a news analyst for ABC since the early 1980s and was a founding member on the panel of ABC's This Week with David Brinkley in 1981, now titled This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Will was also a regular panelist on television's Agronsky & Company from 1977 through 1984 and on NBC's Meet the Press in the mid-to-late 1970s. He left ABC to join Fox News in early October 2013.

Reviews

[Mickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Will's editorials dating back to the Reagan administration are informative and entertaining in a way that an overview of that time period could not be. His insights and occasional thunderings about weighty contemporary issues like martial law in Poland, the '84 presidential election, and the Soviets have an urgency and his use of specific examples, connections, and images have a freshness that most history accounts lack. He also tackles other topical issues like the themes of E.T. (the movie), Shel Silverstein, and his children.

I have long been a fan of George Will, since I first noticed his column in the back of Newsweek when I was in middle school. His views were so contrary to what I had been taught was true and "smart". I was truly shocked to discover that there could be a modern, intelligent, dissenting opinion. Brilliant and grumpy, Will keeps a sardonic distance from his audience. His restraint, preciseness, formality, and caustic wit remind me of a different time. He would seem more at home in the 18th century than in our "Donahue" and "Oprah" times. One particular instance that comes to mind: after the death of Princess Diana, he wrote an editorial asking us why we were being so hysterical about a woman we didn't know personally.

About The Morning After, this is one of his best collections. It has one of my favorite series of essays, dealing with a Down Syndrome boy named Phillip Becker who was being denied treatment.

[Frank Inserra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start by saying how much I detest the George Will of the current period - a man who modifies his basic, unremarkable Midwestern conservatism to please a target audience lunging headlong into environments far right of where his heart probably lies. This book was from a period long before the current George Will. It tells the Reagan story from the perspective of a man well within America's center-right Republican history. In short, it was Voodoo Economics all along. Crisp pros, convincing arguments.