As late as Election Day, headlines across the country blared that the race was "too close to call. " Even on the verge of his historic triumph in the 1980 presidential election, political observers continued to underestimate Ronald Wilson Reagan. In Rendezvous with Destiny, the long-awaited follow-up to his widely praised account of Reagan's insurgent 1976 presidential campaign, Craig Shirley tells the incredible behind-the-scenes story of Reagan's improbable run to the White House in 1980 - of how the "too close to call" election became a landslide victory over incumbent Jimmy Carter and independent candidate John Anderson. And this, Shirley shows, was no ordinary election. It dramatically altered the course of American - and world - history. Reagan's victory gave rise to a new generation of conservatism, ended liberalism's half-century reign of dominance, reversed the second-worst economic crisis in American history, and led to the demise of the mighty Soviet Union.