{"id":392,"date":"2018-12-31T12:06:31","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=392"},"modified":"2018-12-31T12:06:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:06:31","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=392","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, <\/span>freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n
\n

Betty Boyd Caroli<\/span> is the author of Lady Bird and Lyndon, First Ladies: Martha Washington to Michelle Obama, Inside the White House,<\/span> and The Roosevelt Women.<\/span> She has been a guest on Today, The O\u2019Reilly Factor, Lehrer NewsHour, Al Jazeera, Booknotes with Brian Lamb,<\/span> and many other shows. A graduate of Oberlin College, Caroli holds a master\u2019s degree in mass communications from the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in American civilization from New York University. She currently resides in New York City and Venice, Italy.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

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

Betty Boyd Caroli<\/span><\/p>\n

Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Simon & Schuster<\/p>\n

Ebook, 978-1-4391-9124-8 (also available in hardcover and as an audio book), 480 pgs., $14.99<\/p>\n

October 27, 2015<\/p>\n

Claudia Alta \u201cLady Bird\u201d Taylor and Lyndon Baines Johnson<\/span> met in the Texas Railroad Commission Office in September of 1934. He proposed the next day and they eloped two months later. Lady Bird, the independent, determined, business-minded offspring of a jaw-droppingly dysfunctional marriage, needed a vehicle, as a woman in Texas during the Great Depression, to \u201clet her deploy her ambition\u201d and decided Lyndon was that man.<\/p>\n

In Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President<\/span><\/a><\/span> Betty Boyd Caroli makes a convincing case that Lady Bird was certainly not the timid wallflower as she is so often portrayed in biographies of President Lyndon Johnson, but rather a \u201cgirl [who] gradually became a figure of steel cloaked in velvet,\u201d who transformed herself into the \u201cmodel political wife\u201d and an example for future first ladies.<\/p>\n

In simple prose, and with access to private letters, \u201cmost of them not available to researchers until Valentine\u2019s Day in 2013 and not used by a Johnson biographer until now,\u201d Caroli creates an informal, sometimes gossipy tone, with a pop psychology bent. Caroli\u2019s thesis is that Lyndon could not have been as successful as he was without Lady Bird (\u201cfixer, enabler, smoother-of-feelings\u201d) and that those letters prove her case, revealing \u201cthe implicit deal the pair struck with each other: that Lyndon would fulfill her ambition of being matched with a man as charismatic and as comfortable with power as her father while taking her away from him, and that Bird would provide Lyndon with a ferocious devotion equal to his mother\u2019s and the emotional ballast he needed to achieve his ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Lady Bird and Lyndon<\/span> is the story of a marriage, not of individuals, it is evident that Caroli admires Lady Bird and the book concentrates on her. Caroli explains away Lady Bird\u2019s shortcomings but spares Lyndon nothing in detailing manic-depressive behavior, paranoia, verbal abuse (\u201cthe treatment\u201d) of everyone in his orbit, including his wife, and his seemingly countless affairs. While important to a marriage biography, the regular reports, not to mention an entire chapter, on Lyndon the \u201csexual conquistador\u201d are repetitive enough to be tiresome.<\/p>\n

Lady Bird and Lyndon<\/span> is full of fascinating details about the behind-the-scenes functioning of a partnership that affected the lives of many millions of people. I have a much fuller picture of the actual person of Lady Bird. In the end, though, this book tells the story of a pathological relationship that, nevertheless and no matter the personal costs to the individuals and the collateral damage inflicted, appears to have attained its public goals. Is that success?<\/p>\n

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

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, […]<\/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-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","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=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}