The Best TIME Covers

80's - Current

1981

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Man of the Year
January 5, 1981

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Cover Story Excerpt:
On an afternoon in early December, Los Angeles was in the 60s and Ronald Reagan looked like a dream. He was wearing a blue-and-green wool tartan jacket, a purple tie, white shirt, white handkerchief, black pants and black loafers with gold along the tops. Who else could dress that way? He settled back on a couch in a living room so splurged with color that even the black seemed exuberant. A florist must have decorated it. A florist must have decorated his voice. He was talking about job hunting as a kid in his home town of Dixon, Ill., telling an American success story he has told a hundred times before. He seemed genuinely happy to hear it again...Read the full story

The Worst TIME Covers

Walk back through TIME magazine's history of the images we'd rather forget

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