{"id":1458,"date":"2018-12-31T17:20:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T17:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1458"},"modified":"2018-12-31T17:20:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T17:20:45","slug":"lone-star-book-reviews-54","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1458","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/span><\/p>\n

A historian with research focusing on U.S. foreign relations and modern American politics, Kyle Longley<\/span> was named director of the LBJ Presidential Library at the University of Texas in July 2018. In addition to LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval,<\/span> he is author of In the Eagle’s Shadow: The United States and Latin America;<\/span> Senator Albert Gore, Sr.: Tennessee Maverick;<\/span> and, The Morenci Marines: A Tale of Small Town America.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>10.7.18<\/span><\/p>\n

BIOGRAPHY\/ POLITICS & GOVERNMENT<\/p>\n

Kyle Longley<\/span><\/p>\n

LBJ\u2019s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Cambridge University Press<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-1071-9303-1, (also available as an e-book), 374 pgs., $29.99<\/p>\n

February 22, 2018<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Dr. Chris Manno<\/span><\/p>\n

Longley\u2019s narrative LBJ\u2019s 1968 is so compelling from page one<\/span> that by chapter three the reader has to stop to remember that it\u2019s not actually about President Lyndon B. Johnson. Rather, the text is a riveting and, in many places horrifying, account of the year 1968 as Johnson wrestled with, in his own words, \u201cthat bitch of a war on the other side of the world\u201d while struggling to lead a nation torn apart by antiwar and civil-rights protests and riots.<\/p>\n

This tumultuous history plays across Johnson\u2019s face in the reader\u2019s mind like an old newsreel, sad but relentless. The president\u2019s anguish along with the nation\u2019s torment are visceral and, owing to Longley\u2019s comprehensive research, direct quotes and firsthand accounts, seamlessly woven into a claustrophobic portent of inescapable disaster, which Johnson most surely felt.<\/p>\n

In beautifully precise but simply crafted prose, Longley has achieved a comfortably readable balance between narrative and descriptive details that thrusts the reader into the oval office, the White House family quarters, and the situation room.<\/p>\n

A procession of cabinet members, Pentagon officials, and presidential advisors confer, negotiate, and disagree as Johnson tries unsuccessfully to extricate his presidency from the quagmire of war and social upheaval. They stumble through the North Korean seizure of the USS Pueblo,<\/span> to the North Vietnamese assault on the U.S. Marines in Khe Sanh, to the unforeseen all-out assault that was the Tet offensive, and watch Johnson reel from foreign policy blows, yet rise from the mat to fight on.<\/p>\n

At home, a hostile Congress smells failure and weakness as both parties stake out territory in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections. Johnson battles threats from his own party as his old nemesis Robert Kennedy challenges him for the nomination, and peacenik Democrat Eugene McCarthy trounces the sitting president in the first primary. At the same time, Richard Nixon and the Republicans paint LBJ as weak and ineffective, hanging Vietnam like an albatross around his neck.<\/p>\n

Clearly, Johnson is under siege from all sides, while his closest advisors vacillate in disarray, at his and one another\u2019s throats over both blame and strategy. At the center of the whirlwind, Johnson quietly weighs his own personal bombshell, one that clashes with the advice of Lady Bird and his most trusted inner circle.<\/p>\n

The comparison most appropriate to LBJ\u2019s 1968 would be the HMS Titanic:<\/span> we all know the story, know the characters are doomed, but still can\u2019t not watch, still pore over the smallest details hoping to make sense of the tragedy in a way no one could at the time of the disaster. Longley gives us both sides of the devolving story \u2014 the president\u2019s-eye view and that of the nation \u2014 in factual, autopsy-worthy gory detail. From that emerges a new, more sympathetic picture of battered, rough-hewn Lyndon Johnson, as well a stark, historically impeccable account of one of the worst years in late twentieth-century American history.<\/p>\n

In the final analysis, Longley offers a mixed postmortem of Johnson, with equal parts self-inflicted wounds and intractable, un-survivable circumstances. Perhaps LBJ himself summed it up best at Thanksgiving late in 1968, saying, \u201cAmericans looking back at 1968 may be more inclined to ask God\u2019s mercy and guidance than to offer him thanks for his blessings.\u201d That, from the tall Texan given to bold, provocative speech, is an understatement.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lone Star Book Reviews of Texas books appear weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR A historian with research focusing on U.S. foreign relations and modern American politics, Kyle Longley was named director of the LBJ Presidential Library at the University of Texas in July 2018. In addition to LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}