Reagan book sets off debate

Rick Perlstein always hoped his book on the rise of Ronald Reagan would set off serious debate among scholars and historians. Just not this debate.

Perlstein's new 856-page book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, is proving to be almost as divisive as Reagan himself. It has drawn both strong reviews from prominent book critics, and sharp criticism from some scholars and commentators who accuse Perlstein of sloppy scholarship, improper attribution and plagiarism.

The most serious accusations come from a fellow Reagan historian, Craig Shirley, who said that Perlstein plagiarised several passages from Shirley's 2004 book, Reagan's Revolution, and used Shirley's research numerous times without proper attribution.

In two letters to Perlstein's publisher, Simon & Schuster, Shirley's lawyer, Chris Ashby, cited 19 instances of duplicated language and inadequate attribution, and demanded $25 million in damages, a public apology, revised digital editions and the destruction of all physical copies of the book. Shirley said he has since tallied close to 50 instances where his work was used without credit.

Perlstein and his publisher said the charges are unfounded and noted that Perlstein cited Shirley's book 125 times on his website,rickperlstein.net, where he posted his endnotes, which include thousands of citations and links to sources.

"The claim of plagiarism doesn't fly; these are paraphrases," Perlstein said in a phone interview. "I'm reverent toward my sources. History is a team sport, and references are how you support your teammates."

Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, called the plagiarism charges "ludicrous" and said the book was "a meticulously researched work of scholarship."

Perlstein, 44, suggested that the attack on his book is partly motivated by conservatives' discomfort with his portrayal of Reagan. Shirley is president and chief executive of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, which represents conservative clients like Citizens United and Ann Coulter.

But Shirley and his lawyer contend that Perlstein paraphrased original research without properly giving credit. "The rephrasing of words without proper attribution is still plagiarism," Shirley said in an interview.

The dispute casts a shadow over the release of The Invisible Bridge, which traces Reagan's political rise and the transformation of American popular culture from 1973 to 1976. The book, the third volume in Perlstein's expansive history of American politics in the 1960s and 1970s, was greeted with largely laudatory reviews from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. Simon & Schuster announced a robust first printing of 75,000 copies. A fourth volume is already under contract.

"Rick Perlstein's scholarship is impeccable," Karp said. "We think he's the great popular historian of the next generation."

But some commentators are also questioning Perlstein's accuracy and work ethic. In a sharply critical review on the website Open Letters Monthly, its managing editor, Steve Donoghue, wrote, "Almost everywhere you look, you find Perlstein neatening and shortening and simplifying and exaggerating."

And in a coming review for The Atlantic, Sam Tanenhaus, a writer at large for The New York Times who also writes for other publications, wrote that Perlstein "now finds rumour more illuminating than fact." Lamenting the lack of primary sources, he wrote that Perlstein had "adopted the methodology of the web aggregator."

The debate about Perlstein's book also calls into question the growing practice of shifting endnotes out of print books and onto the web. In what Perlstein calls "a publishing innovation," readers of The Invisible Bridge are directed to a trove of digital citations on Perlstein's website.

He and his publisher said they moved the endnotes online not just to save money - the notes would have made the hardcover edition unwieldy and expensive at 1,000-plus pages - but also to make his research more transparent by providing links to the books, newspaper clippings and news reports that Perlstein drew on. "I want to expand this idea of history as a collective enterprise," he said. "My notion is that people will read this book with their iPhones open."

But many academics and publishers remain uncomfortable with the practice, saying it requires readers to take an extra step to find a writer's sources, and that online documentation could be easily lost. "The concern for me is that the URLs won't live forever, and future scholars could be frustrated if they cannot easily find the notes," said Bruce Nichols, the publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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