Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream - by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Paperback)

About the Book

"Portions of this book originally appeared in Atlantic Monthly and McCall's"--Copyright page.

Book Synopsis

An engrossing biography of President Lyndon Johnson from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Team of Rivals

Hailed by the New York Times as "the most penetrating, fascinating political biography I have ever read," Doris Kearns Goodwin's extraordinary and insightful book draws from meticulous research in addition to the author's time spent working at the White House from 1967 to 1969.

After Lyndon Johnson's term ended, Goodwin remained his confidante and assisted in the preparation of his memoir. In Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, she traces the 36th president's life from childhood to his early days in politics, and from his leadership of the Senate to his presidency, analyzing his dramatic years in the White House, including both his historic domestic triumphs and his failures in Vietnam.

Drawn from personal anecdotes and candid conversations with Johnson, Goodwin paints a rich and complicated portrait of one of our nation's most compelling politicians.

Review Quotes

"The most penetrating, fascinating political biography I have ever read . . . No other President has had a biographer who had such access to his private thoughts." --The New York Times

"Magnificent, brilliant, illuminating...A profound analysis of both the private and the public man." --Miami Herald

"Kearns has made Lyndon Johnson so whole, so understandable that the impact of the book is difficult to describe. It might have been called 'The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, ' for he comes to seem nothing so much as a figure out of Greek tragedy." --Houston Chronicle

"A fine and shrewd book...Extraordinary...Poignant...The best [biography of LBJ] we have to date." --Boston Globe

"Absorbing and sympathetic, warts and all." --The Washington Post

"A grand and fascinating portrait of a most complicated, haunted, and here appealing man." --The Village Voice

About the Author

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a celebrated historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's award-winning film Lincoln, and five other critically acclaimed and bestselling books. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts.