J's Pages

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. --Ecclesiastes 1:9 

While reading through this biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, I felt very much like I've been living in a rerun. Or maybe "remake" might be e better metaphor. I mean, we still have a foreign boogey-man (-men?), but these days some Americans fear Muslim terrorists rather than Communist agitators. But rioting and protests over racism are, sadly, back in the news. 

I think this initial thought about the book goes to illustrate that Professor Woods did a good job of conveying the zeitgeist of the eras in which Johnson lived and worked. In LBJ, Johnson is portrayed as a forceful, egotistical man, but one with a definite sense of duty to his country and a compassion for all of his citizens. It covers his life from his family history in Texas, through his childhood and initial career as a teacher, to his final calling as a politician. The reader travels along that career as a secretary for Congressman Richard Kleberg, a state Director for the National Youth Administration under the New Deal, through his influential role as a senator, and to his somewhat marginalized role as Vice President. The death of John Kennedy thrust Johnson into the presidency, and the book details how he faced the challenges of carrying on the legacies of Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Society programs, as well as the challenges of the quagmire that was the Vietnam War. Professor Woods is a good storyteller and gave me a definite appreciation of Johnson. (I may have to put this book on my shelf.) It also brought my own life into focus as I read how the president of my early childhood and his contemporaries in government shaped the society which I grew up thinking was "normal". 

LibraryThing link

Labels: OnMyShelf, PresidentialBioReadingList

// posted by John @ 6:04 PM