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LBJ: Architect of American Ambition

Author: Randall B Woods

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 sameideals 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.

The New York Times - Alan Brinkley

… in writing LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, Woods has produced an excellent biography that fully deserves a place alongside the best of the Johnson studies yet to appear. He is more sympathetic and nuanced than Caro, more fluid and (despite the significant length of his book) more concise than Dallek — and equally scrupulous in his use of archives and existing scholarship. Even readers familiar with the many other fine books on Johnson will learn a great deal from Woods.

The Washington Post - Nick Kotz

… in his masterful new biography, Randall B. Woods convincingly makes the case for Johnson's greatness -- as the last American president whose leadership achieved truly revolutionary breakthroughs in progressive domestic legislation, bringing changes that have improved the lives of most Americans. In this compelling, massive narrative, Woods portrays Johnson fairly and fully in all his complexity, with adequate attention to flaws in his character and his tragic miscalculations in Vietnam. Considering today's vitriolic polarization, it is instructive to learn how Johnson skillfully won broad public and bipartisan support to break the gridlock associated with the controversial, historic 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts and more than a score of other major initiatives.

Publishers Weekly

Why, after major works by Robert A. Caro and Robert Dallek, do we need another biography of Lyndon B. Johnson? The answer is that Johnson was so complex that every new biographer willing to do the tough spadework of original research discovers fresh layers of Johnsonian reality to explain, new psychological and political corridors to explore. Such is the case with this excellent new work by University of Arkansas historian Woods (Fulbright, a Biography). Woods finds Johnson's key motivation to be largely altruistic, emerging from righteous outrage over the poverty and racism he'd witnessed while growing up in Texas. Woods serves up a Johnson who is less cynical, less self-serving and more heroic and tragic than the man portrayed elsewhere. Woods's Johnson is a man who saw his greatest personal ambitions realized with the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, and the Great Society programs. Not inappropriately, Woods concludes his eloquent and riveting account by quoting Ralph Ellison, who noted that Johnson, spurned at the end of his life by both liberals and conservatives, would "have to settle for being recognized as the greatest American President for the poor and for the Negroes, but that, as I see it, is a very great honor indeed." 16 pages of b&w photos. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Gilbert Taylor - Booklist

Wood's single volume evenhandedly condenses the complexities and controversies associated with the thirty-sixth president of the U.S....Raised in the populist tradition, LBJ cut his political teeth as an all-out New Dealer. But he shrewdly knew that the ambitions he harbored for himself and American society would never be realized without placating conservatives of various kinds--economic, segregationist, or anticommunist. In this fact of Johnson's political life, which induced some to perceive him as a malodorous wheeler-dealer, Woods detects a remarkable consistency, an inwardly liberal LBJ whose outwardly moderate politics were an expression of his mastery of political calculus...Thorough, astute, and readable.

Steven Carroll - The Age

This is an absorbing portrait of a man who was as stand-and-deliver as his plain-speaking persona suggested but also a highly complex, driven individual who not only sought power but sought to do something with it.

Library Journal

Woods (history, Univ. of Arkansas; Fulbright: A Biography) offers a sympathetic portrayal of Lyndon Johnson as a progressive legislator and president. The LBJ presented here contrasts strikingly with the self-serving, power-hungry politician depicted in the first two volumes of Robert Caro's biography, The Path to Power and Means of Ascent. He is more like the calculating and complex leader revealed in Robert Dallek's Flawed Giant. Richly but sometimes overly detailed, this substantial biography traces Johnson from his Texas childhood to his many years in the House and Senate, his accidental presidency following Kennedy's assassination, and his 1964 landslide election and Great Society triumphs, ultimately brought down by the Vietnam War. The author's strength is his excellent account of LBJ's presidency, especially how his domestic programs benefited African Americans and other minorities. His weakness is that unlike Dallek he does not provide a summation of Johnson's political legacy. In this thoroughly researched and fluidly written narrative, Woods adds some luster to Johnson's reputation. Primarily for Johnson scholars and serious general readers; strongly recommended for all academic and larger public libraries.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Lyndon Johnson was the architect of his own downfall, as this sprawling biography shows. Who knew that at the instant LBJ heard the crack of Oswald's rifle on that November morning in Dallas, he "was both exhilarated and apprehensive"? Defying commonsensical convention, Woods (History/Univ. of Arkansas) presumes to inhabit the president's mind at key moments, and he over-dramatizes where plenty of drama is already in play. Despite these blemishes, Woods's life of the blustering Texan who found John Kennedy too conservative has many virtues. He ably depicts how childhood circumstances-poverty, an alcoholic father, a domineering mother-forged Johnson's character, and often not to the good; by the time he entered college, LBJ had a knack for making enemies and a tendency to bully and manipulate others into doing his dirty work. He was secretive and aggressive, earning the nickname "Bull" for his rough ways and nonstop talking. For all his flaws, though, Johnson evolved into a definitive politician brilliantly skilled at forging strange-bedfellows alliances and making compromises. One of his first acts on entering the Senate was to forge a close relationship with Georgian Richard Russell, a segregationist and right-winger who was also a master of persuasion and vote-getting. Johnson quickly learned, and he outpaced the master, who exclaimed, "The son of a bitch, you can't say no to him!" LBJ kept the South Democratic; he gathered power carefully, amassing blackmail-worthy dossiers on his colleagues, and used that power to win pitched battles-all fine, so long as he was striving for social justice and racial equality. Alas, Vietnam derailed him, and Woods's book closes lingeringly on apresident so broken by that distant war that he welcomed the prospect of either Bobby Kennedy's or Richard Nixon's taking over the White House to "heal the wounds now separating the country."A sympathetic, well-rounded complement to Robert Caro's monumental biography-in-progress.

Table of Contents:

Prologue     1
Roots     5
Growing Up     20
College     44
The Secretary     70
Lady Bird and the NYA     92
Congress     116
Pappy     138
War     158
Truman and the Coming of the Cold War     179
Coke     196
A Populist Gentlemen's Club     219
Leader     248
Passing the Lord's Prayer     274
Back from the Edge     291
Containing the Red-Hots: From Dulles to the Dixie Association     313
Lost in Space     332
1960     352
Camelot Meets Mr. Cornpone     375
Hanging On     400
Interregnum: Death and Resurrection     415
"Kennedy Was Too Conservative for Me"     440
Free at Last     467
Containment at Home and Abroad     483
"The Countryside of the World"     501
Bobby     519
Barry     539
A New Bill of Rights     557
The Crux of the Matter     574
Daunted Courage     593
Castro's and Kennedy's Shadows     621
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
Acknowledgments     957
Index     959