High middle-brow, or Petite Bourgeois, both Robin and Perlstein. I presume they chose to write HMB books for a HMB audience, rather than academic books to be read primarily by academics, and are/were capable of more, but the ambition will eventually change both the product and the writer.
Commodification, and especially turning the facts and history into a morality play, a teleology and an eschatology.
Coincidentally, last night I watched Konchalovskiy's 1970 film Uncle Vanya. Bondarchuk, Smoktunovsky, and that goddess Irina Kupchenko. Real fucking good, and the director probably elevated the Chekhov above HMB.
I've been reading all the "Doonesbury" strips from the fall of 1976 through January of 1980, seriatim.
One of us!!
but you have to lament the passing of an era when Ronald Reagan was considered a dangerous radical instead of a beloved statesman.
I can't find a clip (I guess the show was too early for easy copy-to-online-clip?), but wasn't it on ongoing joke of All in the Family that Archie Bunker was a Ronald Reagan supporter?
I am finding that my emotional response to this one is more intense, because it's starting to get close to events that I personally remember
Yeah, Nixonland depressed the hell out of me (especially reading it during the '08 campaign) but I ate it up. I find I have to put The Invisible Bridge aside more often both for the same reason as you and because I find myself getting too annoyed with Nixon, Reagan, and/or Perlstein. (I found the innuendo about Nancy Davis's life before she met Reagan a bit too much.)
Speaking of reading: I'm on track to finish Piketty tomorrow, but the chapter 16 summary may be late.