Images of Greatness: An Intimate Look at the Presidency of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan’s eight years in the White House had as much impact throughout the world as have any American president’s terms before or since. For five and a half of those years, from June 1983 until Reagan’s last day in office, official White House photographer Pete Souza was the president’s virtual shadow. Souza’s unlimited access to the president helped him chronicle one of the most eventful periods in modern history with startling detail and unequalled passion.Souza and his cameras were present during some of the most significant events in world politics, and his personal relationship with the president also allowed him into the most intimate reaches of Reagan’s world. From the president’s angry utterance to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev following the failed 1986 summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, to his playfully tossing a paper airplane off a hotel balcony, Images of Greatness poignantly captures the drama and impact of Reagan’s presidency as well as the humor and compassion that defined his more private, human side.Images of Greatness follows our nation’s fortieth presidency through the award-winning lens of one of our time’s most celebrated photographers. Souza has gathered more than 100 exclusive photographs and devoted them to slices of the Reagan presidency that include his daily working life, his foreign travel and many hours spent on Air Force One, his landmark summits with Gorbachev and other heads of state, the stolen moments on his California ranch, both times of international crisis and lighthearted laughter, and his emotional final day in office. This remarkable, compelling work both tells the story of perhaps our most dramatic, celebrated presidency and also sheds a never-before-seen light on the man behind it.