"Judgment Days" is truly a five-star book. It is a page turner. It is extremely well-documented and reads very easily. Nick Kotz, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, relies on many other books, oral histories, newspaper articles, interviews he conducted, etc.
As another reviewer stated: Judgment Days is riveting history and journalism--a real page turner about two fascinating, larger-than-life characters that come to life as in no other book I've read about Lyndon Johnson or Martin Luther King, Jr. In the background is the insidious J. Edgar Hoover trying to sabotage King and manipulate Johnson."
LBJ receives transcripts of FBI wiretaps of Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) that were approved by the attorney general at the time, which was Robert Kennedy. I believe Nicholas Katzenbach was Deputy Attorney General and he also either approved or supported the wiretaps. J Edgar Hoover (Hoover) was trying to show that MLK's advisors were communists. There was no proof other than that one of the advisors had been a member or affiliated with the communist party six or so years prior to the civil rights movement.
The book discusses LBJ's positives and flaws--namely his mastery of the Senate, his devotion to civil rights, his unrelenting drive, his oversized ego, his paranoia, his total demand for loyalty, his eavesdropping on MLK, his crudeness, his own fear of Hoover possibly due to his unfaithfulness to Lady Bird Johnson, and his mistreatment of subordinates.
Interestingly, no one, other than LBJ during his dark moods, seems to buy Hoover's assertions that MLK's movement was instigated by Communists. And even more interesting, no one seems to care that MLK had extramarital affairs. No reporter would report on MLK's extramarital affairs.
Nick Kotz recommends you read both of Robert Dallek's two books on LBJ in which you will find out that LBJ was not comfortable with foreign affairs because he could not manipulate foreign leaders like members of US Congress.
This book also discusses the terrible relationship between LBJ and Robert F Kennedy (RFK). Johnson was crude and rude. RFK was rude and disrespectful. He was a spoiled scion of a wealthy man. RFK did not have the people skills that his brother, JFK, had. It is amazing that LBJ asked RFK to stay on as attorney general. I believe this was a mistake. But LBJ undercut RFK by having Hoover report directly to LBJ and not go through Hoover, his supervisor.
This is what you will learn from the book and others that supplement it:
LBJ was a doer. Also, he hated to lose. That is one of the main reasons, along with advice from most of his advisors, he sent troops to Vietnam. He probably opposed civil rights when he was a Senator and Congressman because he wanted to be re-elected. As I said, LBJ did not like to lose. But LBJ thought that the poor should be uplifted, particularly Afro Americans and Mexican Americans. LBJ was crude, a master manipulator, but his heart was in the right place. It is well known that LBJ was a master legislator. THIS BOOK SHOWS EXACTLY HOW LBJ OPERATED TO GET LEGISLATION PASSED.
After JFK's assassination, LBJ's rose to the opportunity of being the US President. He worked his legislative skills. Judgment Days shows that LBJ's METHODS INCLUDE MORE THAN JUST GETTING IN SOMEONE'S FACE.
A note about JFK, not necessarily obtained from "Judgment Days"---
JFK in my estimation was a weak President. JFK thought he could not get Congress to pass meaningful civil rights legislation. And he was probably right unless he had decided to empower LBJ. Like all US presidents, JFK did not want to share the limelight with his vice-president so LBJ did very little as vice-president. But JFK was very respectful of LBJ. LBJ was correct, along with others, that JFK was not ready to be President. JFK was strong on rhetoric, spoke very well, used the press to his advantage, was graceful before the camera, and was very good looking. The country loved him. I loved JFK when I was a kid growing up in the 1960s. But JFK did not pass much meaningful legislation.
JFK was terrible in foreign relations (not discussed in this book). JFK waited too long during the Cuban Missile Crisis before confronting Nikita Khrushchev. By the time JFK gave Khrushchev an ultimatum to get the nuclear missiles out of Cuba, the missiles were already mated with the warheads. If Khrushchev had been crazy like many Americans thought he was, then cities on the American East Coast would have been bombed with nuclear weapons. And since JFK wanted to overthrow Castro he should not have tried surreptitiously as he did in the failed Bay of Pigs affair. Also, JFK increased US presence in South Vietnam by sending over about 15,000 advisors (Green Berets). JFK also overthrew the Diem Government in South Vietnam and then installed another puppet government, which the US also overthrew. If you read "Intervention: How America became involved in Vietnam", by George McT Kahin, a deceased professor from Cornell University, you will conclude that both South Vietnam and North Vietnam wanted the same thing--reunification. Understandably the South Vietnamese Army lacked determination to fight the communists, even though the US was against and afraid of communism.
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