A majestic big-picture account of the Great Society and the forces that shaped it, from Lyndon Johnson and members of Congress to the civil rights movement and the media
Between November 1963, when he became president, and November 1966, when his party was routed in the midterm elections, Lyndon Johnson spearheaded the most transformative agenda in American political history since the New Deal, one whose...

A single-volume, abridged edition of the two-volume portrait offers insight into the president's ambitious and demanding personality, his achievements in the White House, and his personal reflections on the challenges of the Vietnam War.

Beginning after his election to the Presidency, Lyndon Johnson's dreams for "The Great Society" and his vision for civil rights in America were overshadowed by the Vietnam War. Johnson watches the nation react to the deaths of young Americans overseas.

"In the spring of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson had a decision to make. Just months after moving into the White House under the worst of circumstances--following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy--he had decide whether to run to win the presidency in his own right. He turned to his most reliable, trusted political strategist: his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. The memo she produced for him, long overlooked by biographers, is just one revealing...

Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to explain why such decent, brilliant, and previously successful men stumbled so badly, until now.

Riding in an open-topped convertible through Dallas on November 22, 1963, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson heard a sudden explosive sound at 12:30 P.M. The Secret Service sped him away to safety and at 1:20 P.M. he learned that JFK had been assassinated. Here historian Steven Gillon tells the story of how Johnson consolidated power in the twenty-four hours following the assassination - actions that determined the tragic outcome of his presidency.

LBJ's towering political skills and his ambitious slate of liberal legislation are the stuff of legend: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and environmental reform. But what happened after the bills passed? One man could not and did not go it alone. Joshua Zeitz reanimates the creative and contentious atmosphere inside Johnson's White House as a talented and energetic group of advisers made...

"As a young White House correspondent during the Kennedy and Johnson years in Washington, D.C., Godfrey Hodgson had a ringside seat covering the last two great presidents of the United States, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, two men who could not have been more different. Kennedy's wit and dashing style, his renown as a national war hero, and his Ivy League Boston Brahmin background stood in sharp contrast to Lyndon Johnson's rural, humble...