`President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination': How president's greatest role came together.(Book Review)

Byline: Marc Schogol

``President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination'' by Richard Reeves; Simon & Schuster ($30)

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Although his most rabid partisans might disagree, Ronald Reagan certainly wasn't our greatest president. But like him or not, he certainly was unique.

A so-so movie actor in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, Reagan morphed from a New Deal Democrat into a new Barry Goldwater conservative. In the 1960s, he parlayed a post-cinema career as a motivational speaker for General Electric into a successful race for governor of (where else?) California. Then, after several unsuccessful attempts to get the Republican presidential nomination, he succeeded in 1980 and went on to defeat Jimmy Carter.

At age 69, the man from Dixon, Ill., who had once starred in a …