Indomitable Will

Few presidents, while in office, were both admired and loathed as much as Lyndon Johnson. Updegrove (director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, TX; Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis) brings together secondary sources, previously completed oral histories and interviews, and further interviews he conducted for this book to offer a mostly sympathetic portrayal of LBJ. While he focuses on Johnson's presidency, which soared with the passage of his Great Society legislation in 1964 and 1965 and fell in 1968 because of the Vietnam War and a country still torn apart by race, Updegrove also touches on Johnson's Texas childhood and his post-presidency, cut short by his death in 1973. Lively comments from the author's interviews of and correspondence with Johnson's daughters, close aides, and politicians, notably George McGovern and Walter Mondale, vividly recount Johnson's life and times.