Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997
ISBN 10: 0684804077 ISBN 13: 9780684804071
Seller: Old Book Shop of Bordentown (ABAA, ILAB), Bordentown, NJ, U.S.A.
First Edition
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: fine. First edition. Two volumes, first editions. 0684804077 and 0684804085. Fine in bright crisp dust jackets. 591 pp. with index and 475 pp. Illustrated with photographs. Leading presidential historian Beschloss brings the reader "into the room" with an American political legend, still both revered and hated decades after his death. LBJ was the first President to record his private conversations from his first day in office. He ordered the tapes locked away until at least 2023 but they were unsealed in the mid-1990s. In the first volume, we hear Johnson telling who he thinks really killed JFK, creating the Warren Commission, staking his presidency on the Civil Rights Bill, scuttling RFK's drive to be Vice-President, using the Tokin Gulf attack to expand American presence in Southeast Asia, and unveiling his private, tortured early doubts that we could ever win a war in Vietnam. Volume Two opens with Johnson's campaigning for what would be his huge landslide victory in the 1964 election, handing embarrassing secrets about his opponent Barry Goldwater to friendly reporters, his anger and fear on election night about commentary that his victory was only against Goldwater and not a validation of his policies; horsetrading with George Wallace and martin Luter King as civil rights marchers are bloodied in Selma; manhandling Congress to win voting rights, Medicare and other impotrtant laws.