Lone Star Rising
Vol. 1: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960
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- 40,99 €
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- 40,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Like other great figures of 20th-century American politics, Lyndon Johnson defies easy understanding. An unrivaled master of vote swapping, back room deals, and election-day skulduggery, he was nevertheless an outspoken New Dealer with a genuine commitment to the poor and the underprivileged. With aides and colleagues he could be overbearing, crude, and vindictive, but at other times shy, sophisticated, and magnanimous. Perhaps columnist Russell Baker said it best: Johnson "was a character out of a Russian novel...a storm of warring human instincts: sinner and saint, buffoon and statesman, cynic and sentimentalist."
But Johnson was also a representative figure. His career speaks volumes about American politics, foreign policy, and business in the forty years after 1930. As Charles de Gaulle said when he came to JFK's funeral: Kennedy was America's mask, but this man Johnson is the country's real face.
In Lone Star Rising, Robert Dallek, winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for his study of Franklin D. Roosevelt, now turns to this fascinating "sinner and saint" to offer a brilliant, definitive portrait of a great American politician. Based on seven years of research in over 450 manuscript collections and oral histories, as well as numerous personal interviews, this first book in a two-volume biography follows Johnson's life from his childhood on the banks of the Pedernales to his election as vice-president under Kennedy. We see Johnson, the twenty-three-year-old aide to a pampered millionaire Representative, become a de facto Congressman, and at age twenty-eight the country's best state director of the National Youth Administration. We see Johnson, the "human dynamo," first in the House and then in the Senate, whirl his way through sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, talking, urging, demanding, reaching for influence and power, in an uncommonly successful congressional career.
Dallek pays full due to Johnson's failings--his obsession with being top dog, his willingness to cut corners, and worse, to get there-- but he also illuminates Johnson's sheer brilliance as a politician, the high regard in which key members of the New Deal, including FDR, held him, and his genuine concern for minorities and the downtrodden.
No president in American history is currently less admired than Lyndon Johnson. Bitter memories of Vietnam have sent Johnson's reputation into free fall, and recent biographies have painted him as a scoundrel who did more harm than good. Lone Star Rising attempts to strike a balance. It does not neglect the tawdry side of Johnson's political career, including much that is revealed for the first time. But it also reminds us that Lyndon Johnson was a man of exceptional vision, who from early in his career worked to bring the South into the mainstream of American economic and political life, to give the disadvantaged a decent chance, and to end racial segregation for the well-being of the nation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dallek sums up his subject, the 36th U.S. president, in this generous and touching sentence: ``If Lyndon Johnson demanded much and took much, he also gave much in return.'' In the initial book of this two-volume biography, Dallek ( Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 ) reconstructs Johnson's Texas childhood, his 1937 election to the House, his war experiences as a Navy officer, election to the Senate in '49, his years as ``the greatest Senate majority leader in history,'' and finally his selection as John Kennedy's running mate in 1960. LBJ as wheeler-dealer is already a familiar figure, but Dallek, tracing the origin of the War on Poverty and the Great Society to Johnson's experiences and observations as a young man, reveals that much of the wheeling and dealing was an expression of Johnson's genuine interest in helping the disadvantaged. One of our least-admired presidents, Johnson (1908-1973) has been portrayed in recent years by Robert Caro and others as a monster of ambition, greed and cruelty. Dallek's LBJ is a somewhat more complicated, contradictory and sympathetic character, ``struggling with inner demons that drove and tormented him.'' Photos. 50,000 first printing; $60,000 ad/promo.