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40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As GRIPPING as a movie...revealing LBJ's true SECRET, November 24, 2001
This is truly an astounding, superbly compiled, book. Now, years later, we finally know the truth: Lyndon B. Johnson was not merely a tragic president who stuck to his guns and fought a war he mistakenly believed he could win (with various political restrictions on the military). He was, this book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt in its lively transcripts of his secretly taped phone conversations, a tragic president who stuck to his guns and fought a war he firmly believed would be LOST no matter WHAT. He didn't want to lose, but he didn't want to be the one to pull out, so he got in deeper and deeper, losing sleep and agonizing all the way -- and the consequences to his administration and the country were catastrophic. There are a slew of reasons why you should read (or gift) this amazing book. The main one: true, it does give you perhaps more than you wanted to know about LBJ (but I don't care WHAT some reviewers have said: I LOVE the many sections where he is flirting with and flattering Jackie Kennedy!)...but if you read it you get a clear idea of how a president operated -- and many parts of this book are so dramatic and gripping, they read like a movie script. In fact, I can see the Oliver Stone movie now..... Historian Michael Beschloss makes it seem easy when you read it, but transcribing and annotating (so you know through footnotes what LBJ is referring to when he talks and get some historical context..and know when LBJ is spinning) these conversations taped between 1964 and 1965 could not have been easy. Yet, he gives you the meat and you get to "know" how LBJ thinks and, politically, works. It shows Johnson, warts and all, as a man who could have been one of the top presidents because of his skills, will and sincere desire to serve. But it also shows a highly conflicted, contradictory, at times paranoid and highly depressed man. On the night of his monster landslide 1964 election he is angry and "down," steaming over Bobby Kennedy's influence, lack of political deference and possible future machinations. As he presses and manipulates to get his Great Society legislation passed, he's secretly leaking negative info on election opponent Barry Goldwater, keeping the lid on information regarding his number one aide's role in a sex scandal. He talks of victory in Vietnam, but repeatedly tells politicos and his wife that there is absolutely no way the U.S. can ever win, and he is tormented by his terrible choice and unwanted role. He wants to help the poor and the blacks, but will talk a little more "southern" if he has to while talking to someone who doesn't quite agree with him to make them think he's on their wavelength. The famous Gulf of Tonkin resolution? Even Johnson believed it may not have happened. But he took the resolution in Congress and ran with it -- using it to justify the war he knew he the U.S. could not win. In Feb. 1965 he told a Senator "a man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere. But there ain't no daylight in Vietnam. Not a bit." If you went back and contrasted his public pronouncements with what he was saying privately, it would be shocking: pep talks to the country (and troops) to the contrary, he never felt we could win. Meanwhile, he kissed J. Edgar Hoover's you-know-what to keep Hoover on his side (actually, they had been neighbors in Washington and Johnson had carefully wooed Hoover for years) in his battle against Goldwater, Kennedy and others. Not all of the book is about the sad, deceitful slide into Vietnam. Many of the transcripts deal with his election campaign, domestic legislation etc....but by the end of this fast-moving volume Vietnam is devouring LBJ alive as it did the country -- and the innocence and joy of the early 1960s. I read this book rather quickly. It was an INCREDIBLE experience. Read it and you'll be a very sad fly on the wall in the White House.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Even better than the first set!, December 18, 2001
By A Customer
You don't have to be interested in American history to find this book fascinating. In fact, if you have an aversion to the study of anything of a historical nature, this book may just bring you over to our side. There is no more colorful character in 20th century American political history than Lyndon Johnson. Michael Beschloss does a wonderful job of letting Lyndon tell his own story. His analysis and presentation of our 36th president is perhaps one of the most fair portrayals of a recent president that I have read. I suggest that you purchase both the book and the tapes--the written word and the spoken word can have drastically different interpretations. In the first book, Johnson is presented as a paranoid, uncouth, unwilling country politician who has had the job of president thrust upon him. On more than one occasion he confides in his friends and family that he just isn't up to the job, and doesn't feel that anyone really wants him. But by late 1964, when this book really begins, Johnson steps up to the plate and decides to do his best. The landslide election victory puts the wind back into his sails, and he is ready to take on the world--except Vietnam, which he says on numerous occasions is an unwinnable war. He puts his best foot forward when he gives his speech to Congress requesting passage of the Civil Rights bill of 1965. This was perhaps his brightest moment as Chief Executive. You will also hear the President's candid remarks regarding Alabama Governor George Wallace, who double-crosses Johnson and pays for it, dearly. Johnson also proves to be a visionary, predicting the rapid growth of metropolitan centers, as well as expressing his fear of the effect that high unemployment and lack of education would have on black men. On the tapes, Judith Ivey presents a narration of Lady Bird's journal entries which give a helpful insight to the President's true states of mind. You begin to see this "larger than life" man from the inside and realize his frailties as well as his humanity. I left the first book saying "wow! this guy was an animal!" I left this book with a much different impression of who Lyndon Johnson really was. A man overwhelmed. A man who truly wanted to be loved by people who were suspicious of him simply because of his accent. A man who didn't want any part of the war in Vietnam, but who wasn't strong enough to pull out because he feared giving the impression of weakness more than he feared losing the war. I feel like I know him personally. You will, too.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Finally! the story is told!, June 7, 2004
I don't mean LBJ's real thoughts about the Vietnam war, although obviously that is a great revelation. I mean that I know why it took Michael Beschloss so long to finish this follow-up to "Taking Charge"....these tapes are tough to listen to. They are not the entertaining excerpts of the previous volume. The '64-'65 excerpts show more of LBJ's warts, and cover painful ground, primarily concerning the war in Vietnam. Also, there is so much material that, unlike with the first volume, I found myself getting bored at times. Surely Beschloss himself must have found putting this volume together more difficult. Of course, the fact that negative and humdrum things characterized part of the Johnson's presidency during the two years covered was not Beschluss's fault. But I felt some material, most notably some of the well-wishing calls made by the President and Lady Bird to friends, could have been left out or shortened. Speaking of Lady Bird, however, she becomes a larger and refreshing presence in these tapes. Johnson apparently looked to her as his best critic (in the best sense of the word); she is heard giving him feedback about many speeches. In an era where we tend to think of Hilary Clinton as the first "co-president", it is interesting to learn how much Johnson relied on his wife. Although it might not be a CD set to take to the beach, I still recommend the audio version of this work (not the written version; Johnson's delivery is an indivisible component of his personality). These annotated tape excerpts are nothing less than a piece of history.
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