Examines the decisions made between 1963 and 1965 in regards to escalating United States involvement in the Vietnam War and looks at how early mistakes in policy formation were constantly repeated throughout the Johnson administration.

With new research and previously unavailable interviews, The Last Campaign provides an intimate and absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of America's deepest despairs-and most fiercely held dreams-and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened dramas of his times. After John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy looked past his own pain to that of this country, and he sought...

From one of America's most talented historians comes a brilliant new account of Richard Nixon--set against the violent passions of America's 1960s civil war--that reveals the riveting backstory to the red state/blue state resentments that divide the nation today and the many ways Nixon used riots, anti-Vietnam War protests, the drug culture and other displays of unrest as an easy relief against which to frame his pitch for his narrow win of 1968 and...

Takes us through the vast landscape of Johnson's political and personal life: from his childhood, dominated by an indulgent mother and a hell-raising politico father, through his early political victories and the ideals that inspired them; from the Washington system that trained him, through his election as Vice President and the transitional year, 1964, when JFK's assassination brought him to the highest office in the land; from the remarkable talents...

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.