Status
Genres
Publication
Description
Like other great figures of 20th-century American politics, Lyndon Johnson defies easy understanding. An unrivaled master of vote swapping, back room deals, and election-day skulduggery, he was nevertheless an outspoken New Dealer with a genuine commitment to the poor and the underprivileged.With aides and colleagues he could be overbearing, crude, and vindictive, but at other times shy, sophisticated, and magnanimous. Perhaps columnist Russell Baker said it best: Johnson "was a character out of a Russian novel...a storm of warring human instincts: sinner and saint, buffoon andstatesman, cynic and sentimentalist."But Johnson was also a representative figure. His career speaks volumes about American politics, foreign policy, and business in the forty years after 1930. As Charles de Gaulle said when he came to JFK's funeral: Kennedy was America's mask, but this man Johnson is the country's real face.In Lone Star Rising, Robert Dallek, winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for his study of Franklin D. Roosevelt, now turns to this fascinating "sinner and saint" to offer a brilliant, definitive portrait of a great American politician. Based on seven years of research in over 450 manuscriptcollections and oral histories, as well as numerous personal interviews, this first book in a two-volume biography follows Johnson's life from his childhood on the banks of the Pedernales to his election as vice-president under Kennedy. We see Johnson, the twenty-three-year-old aide to a pamperedmillionaire Representative, become a de facto Congressman, and at age twenty-eight the country's best state director of the National Youth Administration. We see Johnson, the "human dynamo," first in the House and then in the Senate, whirl his way through sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, talking,urging, demanding, reaching for influence and power, in an uncommonly successful congressional career.Dallek pays full due to Johnson's failings--his obsession with being top dog, his willingness to cut corners, and worse, to get there-- but he also illuminates Johnson's sheer brilliance as a politician, the high regard in which key members of the New Deal, including FDR, held him, and hisgenuine concern for minorities and the downtrodden.No president in American history is currently less admired than Lyndon Johnson. Bitter memories of Vietnam have sent Johnson's reputation into free fall, and recent biographies have painted him as a scoundrel who did more harm than good. Lone Star Rising attempts to strike a balance. It doesnot neglect the tawdry side of Johnson's political career, including much that is revealed for the first time. But it also reminds us that Lyndon Johnson was a man of exceptional vision, who from early in his career worked to bring the South into the mainstream of American economic and politicallife, to give the disadvantaged a decent chance, and to end racial segregation for the well-being of the nation.… (more)
User reviews
Robert Dallek traces Andrew Johnson drive coming from his father, a politician in Texas, and his mother’s unfailing beliefs and efforts to make him successful, sometimes in spite of himself. A young adult of the Great Depression he was an avid if sometimes a pragmatic supporter of the poor, Mexicans and African Americans, as well as a friend to the farmer and the oil interests.
His rise from a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, the young secretary to Texas Congressman Kleberg and a leader of the National Youth Administration in Texas, support of the rural electrification program.
He later became a Texas Congressman in his own right from 1937 to 1948, a Texas Senator from 1959 to 1954 a reign as the Texas Minority Leader and from 1950 - 1960 the Majority Leader of the senate. Known as a bipartisan leader who supported many of The Eisenhower’s administration policies and was a firm believer in better to get half a cake in his domestic and foreign agenda than loftier bills which were inevitably vetoed.
His rise to vice presidential candidate and later vice president and an inspired choice by Kennedy, who brought Kennedy to the south and western vote and fought off the anti catholic leaning of much of the country.
I firmly would endorse this as a great biography on Lyndon Baines Johnson.