LBJ: Architect of American Ambition

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Simon and Schuster, 1 nov. 2007 - 1024 pagini
For almost forty years, the verdict on Lyndon Johnson's presidency has been reduced to a handful of harsh words: tragedy, betrayal, lost opportunity. Initially, historians focused on the Vietnam War and how that conflict derailed liberalism, tarnished the nation's reputation, wasted lives, and eventually even led to Watergate. More recently, Johnson has been excoriated in more personal terms: as a player of political hardball, as the product of machine-style corruption, as an opportunist, as a cruel husband and boss.

In LBJ, Randall B. Woods, a distinguished historian of twentieth-century America and a son of Texas, offers a wholesale reappraisal and sweeping, authoritative account of the LBJ who has been lost under this baleful gaze. Woods understands the political landscape of the American South and the differences between personal failings and political principles. Thanks to the release of thousands of hours of LBJ's White House tapes, along with the declassification of tens of thousands of documents and interviews with key aides, Woods's LBJ brings crucial new evidence to bear on many key aspects of the man and the politician. As private conversations reveal, Johnson intentionally exaggerated his stereotype in many interviews, for reasons of both tactics and contempt. It is time to set the record straight.

Woods's Johnson is a flawed but deeply sympathetic character. He was born into a family with a liberal Texas tradition of public service and a strong belief in the public good. He worked tirelessly, but not just for the sake of ambition. His approach to reform at home, and to fighting fascism and communism abroad, was motivated by the same ideals and based on a liberal Christian tradition that is often forgotten today. Vietnam turned into a tragedy, but it was part and parcel of Johnson's commitment to civil rights and antipoverty reforms. LBJ offers a fascinating new history of the political upheavals of the 1960s and a new way to understand the last great burst of liberalism in America.

Johnson was a magnetic character, and his life was filled with fascinating stories and scenes. Through insights gained from interviews with his longtime secretary, his Secret Service detail, and his closest aides and confidants, Woods brings Johnson before us in vivid and unforgettable color.

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Pagini selectate

Cuprins

Containment at Home and Abroad
483
The Countryside of the World
501
Bobby
519
Barry
539
A New Bill ofRights
557
The Crux of the Matter
574
Daunted Courage
593
Castros and Kennedys Shadows
621

War
158
Truman and the Coming of the Cold War
179
Coke
196
A Populist Gentlemens Club
219
Leader
248
Passing the Lords Prayer
274
Back from the Edge
291
From Dulles to the Dixie Association
313
Lost in Space
332
Camelot Meets Mr Cornpone
375
Hanging On
400
Death and Resurrection
415
Kennedy Was Too Conservative for Me
440
Free at Last
467
A City on the Hill
649
Balancing Act
672
Divisions
693
Civil War
715
Battling Dr Strangelove
739
The Holy Land
759
Backlash
783
Of Hawks and Doves Vultures and Chickens
798
Tet
818
A Midsummer Nightmare
838
Touching the Void
865
Notes
885
Index
959
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Pasaje populare

Pagina 537 - Romeo: and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Pagina 434 - First, no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.
Pagina 587 - We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Pagina 754 - If the US Government really wants these talks, it must first of all stop unconditionally its bombing raids and all other acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Pagina 266 - ... generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."12 The opinion concluded in terms of triumph, or so they must have sounded to the NAACP lawyers: "In the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal
Pagina 266 - ... tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.
Pagina 587 - You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Pagina 368 - I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute— where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote...
Pagina 270 - He dons his war paint. He goes into his war dance. He emits his war whoops. He goes forth to battle and proudly returns with the scalp of a pink Army dentist.
Pagina 62 - They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

Despre autor (2007)

Randall B. Woods is John A. Cooper Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, where he has taught since 1971. His Fulbright: A Biography won the 1996 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for the Best Book on American Foreign Relations and the Virginia Ledbetter Prize for the Best Book on Southern Studies. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

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