Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency - Softcover

Updegrove, Mark K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 162636396X ISBN 13: 9781626363960

Publisher: Skyhorse, 2014

Synopsis

Nearly fifty years after being sworn in as president of the United States in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Baines Johnson remains a largely misunderstood figure. His force of personality, mastery of power and the political process, and boundless appetite for social reform made him one of the towering figures of his time. But he was one of the most contradictory and paradoxical of presidents as well.
Intent on fulfilling the promise of America, Johnson launched a revolution in civil rights, federal aid to education, and health care for the elderly and indigent, and expanded immigration and environmental protection. As president, he was known for getting things done. But at the same time, Johnson’s presidency and the fulfillment of its own promise was blighted by his escalation of an ill-fated war in Vietnam that tore at the fabric of America and saw the loss of thirty-six thousand US troops by the end of his term.
Presidential historian Mark K. Updegrove offers an intimate portrait of the endlessly fascinating LBJ, his extraordinarily eventful presidency, and the turbulent times in which he served. Through original interviews and personal accounts from White House aides and cabinet members, political allies and foes, and friends and family from Robert McNamara to Barry Goldwater, Lady Bird Johnson to Jacqueline Kennedy as well as through Johnson’s own candid reflections and historic White House telephone conversations, Indomitable Will reveals LBJ as never before.

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

About this title

About the Author

Mark K. Updegrove is the director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, and the author of Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who took Office in Times of Crisis and Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House. A sought-after commentator on matters relating to politics and the presidency, he has appeared on ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, NPR, NBC News, and PBS.

Review

“A readable, endlessly interesting look at the LBJ years.” —Kirkus

“Updegrove’s valiant and interesting effort to reappraise the man and his presidency is both valuable and necessary.” —Booklist

“ Lyndon Johnson was so big a figure that no one canvas can adequately capture him. Yet Mark K. Updegrove, the director of the Johnson Library and Museum, does remarkably well with one crisp phrase: ‘Flawed, yes, and not always good, but great.’ This is serious work, with a serious second look at . . . the flawed conventional wisdom about Johnson.” —Boston Globe

"Indomitable Will is an instant classic...Mark Updegrove's scholarly mastery of oral histories, original source documents, and presidential writings, combined with a flair for exquisite story telling make for a fascinating, can't-put-down, lust-for-more read." —New York Journal of Books

“This book throbs with voices from an era that proved to be a hinge of American history. Their recollections become a chorus of insight into Lyndon B. Johnson, the colossus of his time, whose personality, politics, and policies are getting a much deserved second look. No one should be more eager to hear these voices than Barack Obama, whose path to the White House was cleared by LBJ’s indomitable will.” —Bill Moyers
 
“I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Lyndon Johnson and his presi­dency. It is an entertaining as well as an enlightening book.” —President Jimmy Carter
 
“Lyndon Johnson is the most underappreciated president of the twentieth century. The tragedy of Vietnam has long overshadowed his accomplishments in domestic affairs, especially on the subject of civil rights, where his positive influence was second only to Lincoln’s. Mark Upde­grove’s innovative examination of Johnson’s presidency marks an important step in setting the record straight.” —H.W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Traitor to His Class and The First American
 
“In history there’s no substitute for being there—unless it’s hearing the candid insights, rev­elations, and occasional belly laugh from those who were. Thanks to Mark Updegrove and his battery of historical eyewitnesses, presented here, as LBJ himself would attest, “with the bark off,” we don’t simply relive the past . . . we experience one of America’s most colorful, polarizing, galvanizing, and, yes, entertaining public lives from the inside out. Whatever you think of Lyn­don Johnson, you’ll never see him in quite the same light after plunging into this compulsively readable group portrait.” —Richard Norton Smith, George Mason University, and author of Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation
 
“Seeing is believing and Mark Updegrove’s book gives the reader an intimate and gripping view of Lyndon Johnson in the president’s own words and the words of those who saw this unbeliev­able American original, Machiavellian and magnificent, wrestling opponents in the Congress and the nation to the mat as he passed civil-rights, anti-poverty, consumer, health, education, environmental, arts, and humanities legislation that has changed our nation to this day.” —Joseph A. Califano Jr., Lyndon Johnson’s chief domestic policy aide and secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Carter administration
 
“Mark Updegrove’s Indomitable Will superbly captures the always interesting Lyndon Johnson. Relying partly on Johnson’s voice, but mainly on the impressions and recollections of the many people who helped shape or observed his administration, the book re creates the great triumphs and frustrations of his presidency. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the sixties as a prelude to our times.” —Robert Dallek, author of Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 and An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963

About this edition

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 162636396X
• ISBN 13: 9781626363960
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400