Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Overview

An engrossing biography of President Lyndon Johnson from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Team of Rivals

Hailed by the New York Times as “the most penetrating, fascinating political biography I have ever read,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s extraordinary and insightful book draws from meticulous research in addition to the author’s time spent working at the White House from 1967 to 1969.

After Lyndon Johnson’s term ended, Goodwin remained his confidante and assisted in the preparation of his memoir. In Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, she traces the 36th president’s life from childhood to his early days in politics, and from his leadership of the Senate to his presidency, analyzing his dramatic years in the White House, including both his historic domestic triumphs and his failures in Vietnam.

Drawn from personal anecdotes and candid conversations with Johnson, Goodwin paints a rich and complicated portrait of one of our nation’s most compelling politicians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250313966
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	34,015
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a celebrated historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film Lincoln, and five other critically acclaimed and bestselling books. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

Hometown:

Concord, MA

Date of Birth:

January 4, 1943

Place of Birth:

Brooklyn, NY

Education:

B. A., Colby College; Ph.D., Harvard University

Website:

http://doriskearnsgoodwin.com/

Table of Contents

Foreword
1. Growing Up
2. Education and the American Dream
3. The Making of a Politician
4. Rise to Power in the Senate
5. The Senate Leader
6. The Vice-Presidency
7. The Transition Year
8. The Great Society
9. Vietnam
10. Things Go Wrong
11. Under Siege in the White House
12. The Withdrawal
Epilogue

Acknowledgements
Author's Postscript
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

The most penetrating, fascinating political biography I have ever read . . . No other President has had a biographer who had such access to his private thoughts.” —The New York Times

“Magnificent, brilliant, illuminating...A profound analysis of both the private and the public man.” —Miami Herald

“Kearns has made Lyndon Johnson so whole, so understandable that the impact of the book is difficult to describe. It might have been called 'The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson,' for he comes to seem nothing so much as a figure out of Greek tragedy.” —Houston Chronicle

“A fine and shrewd book...Extraordinary...Poignant...The best [biography of LBJ] we have to date.” —Boston Globe

“Absorbing and sympathetic, warts and all.” —The Washington Post

“A grand and fascinating portrait of a most complicated, haunted, and here appealing man.” —The Village Voice

From the Publisher