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Indomitable Will: LBJ In The Presidency (2012)

by Mark Updegrove(Favorite Author)

4.03 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0307887715 (ISBN13: 9780307887719)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Crown

review 1: Inhaled this as part of my project to read a book about each president. Fogged by Vietnam, LBJ moved mountains socially and culturally. Civil rights, education, health, public broadcasting, war on poverty; Medicare/Medicaid, Nat'l Endowment for the Arts, Voting & Equal Rights acts -- had it not been for Nam, Johnson would be lionized like FDR for catalyzing significant change in America. Fascinating book composed almost entirely of transcripts and oral histories. Completely changed my view of the man. Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stetsons.
review 2: It is amazing to see how much humanitarian legislation LBJ helped to enact. Things that affect us daily. A man who prodded us into the modern world - civil rights, voting act, education (as he said Give them all they can ... moretake.), immigration reform, HUD, Clean Air and Water Acts, Beautification, which led to the green revolution, Medicare. A highly complex and demanding man. One that we will try to decipher for many years in the same way that we do with Lincoln and Jefferson. I love his line that doing the right thing was not hard, but knowing what the right thing to do was. With the complexity of life, this seems to be our constant conundrum.The style of the narrative was interesting. Having the recollections of his contemporaries to discuss and describe events. I think this made the book move quickly. It also showed the various ways to interpret LBJ. Like a king Lear, his tragedy was Vietnam, yet I wonder if more died during Nixon's terms.I really enjoyed the book. The author is a friendly source, a historian at the library, but he does manage to bring Johnson to life. He changes the image of the uneducated boor. An interesting fact was his interest in space before it was popular. Much of what I have read recently makes have to rethink the old concepts of this President and think of him as a man who tried to do better. less

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