Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight
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4.4 • 15 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A revelation . . . a book in the Caro mold, using Lady Bird, along with tapes and transcripts of her entire White House diary, to tell the history of America during the Johnson years.”—The New York Times
The inspiration for the documentary film The Lady Bird Diaries, premiering November 13 on Hulu
Perhaps the most underestimated First Lady of the twentieth century, Lady Bird Johnson was also one of the most powerful. In Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, Julia Sweig reveals how indispensable the First Lady was to Lyndon Johnson’s administration—which Lady Bird called “our” presidency. In addition to advising him through critical moments, she took on her own policy initiatives, including the most ambitious national environmental effort since Theodore Roosevelt and a virtually unknown initiative to desegregate access to public recreation and national parks in Washington, D.C.
Where no presidential biographer has understood Lady Bird’s full impact, Julia Sweig is the first to draw substantially on her White House diaries and to place her center stage. In doing so, Sweig reveals a woman ahead of her time—and an accomplished strategist and politician in her own right.
Winner of the Texas Book Award • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sweig (Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know), a senior research fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, portrays First Lady Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson (1912 2007) as "a prodigiously disciplined participant, actor, witness to, and student of history" in this revealing biography. Drawing on the diary recordings Johnson began making shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy, Sweig contends that Lady Bird effectively served as her husband's vice president while he filled out the remainder of JFK's term. She was also a key factor in LBJ's decision to run for president in 1964, eliciting his doctors' approval and drafting a memo of pros and cons "that would set the course for the arc of the Johnson presidency." Sweig details Lady Bird's opinions on the Vietnam War, Great Society programs, and civil rights legislation, as well as her own policy agenda, which included urban planning reforms, natural conservation programs, and home rule for Washington, D.C. Johnson also hosted "doers" luncheons, highlighting the achievements of professional women, and supported the arts while working to preserve LBJ's physical health and cultivate his political legacy. Sweig brings her subject to life with exhaustive research and fluid writing. This polished account takes the full measure of the "disarmingly modern" partnership between Lady Bird and LBJ.
