Book Reviews

LBJ: A Life

John Wiley & Sons, 586 pp., $30

Normally, a book with a page count coming in just shy of 600 pages would not be lauded for its brevity and compactness, but when the subject is a giant like Lyndon Johnson, an exception is warranted. Aside from that laudable aspect, LBJ: A Life, by Irwin Unger and Debi Unger, is a biography that stands on its own merits, presenting a comprehensive, objective, and insightful chronicle of LBJ's life and career from cradle to grave -- which is a mighty big job when you think about it.

Lyndon Johnson didn't just occupy space on the planet during those pivotal decades between the New Deal and the Great Society, the Depression and Vietnam; he was at the center of things, he was backstage kicking shins and twisting arms, goosing the cantankerous engine of government to life, laying many of the founding blocks for modern American society, little things like Medicare, the National Endowment for the Arts, PBS funding, the Wilderness Act, and civil rights legislation, to name a few. Irwin and Debi Unger, both veteran chroniclers of the Sixties and the Great Society, handle this material with sure-footed confidence and dexterity, and while they don't shy away from the complexities and apparent contradictions of the great architect of the Great Society, they do not delve into Johnson's much-celebrated flaws with the deliciously literary, almost neurotic determination of Robert Caro in his landmark works on LBJ (Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and a third volume in the works).

For example, LBJ: A Life begins with about 20 pages covering LBJ from cradle to college; the main thematic point being that Johnson was a product of the hardscrabble Hill Country environment who would, like his father before him, never lose his affinity for common people. Robert Caro, who devotes well over 100 pages to this period, makes a signature riff of a quote from Stella Gliddon, an LBJ contemporary who was the editor of the Johnson City paper: "So much has been written about Lyndon, but the thing is that none of it explains what it meant to grow up in a place like this. And without understanding that, no one will ever understand Lyndon Johnson." Well, I grew up in Johnson City. In fact, I attended the same church as LBJ and I used to mow Stella Gliddon's lawn. But I sure wouldn't want to have to do any of those things (and I don't recommend that you do them either) in order to understand Lyndon Johnson. LBJ: A Life is refreshing in its compactness and matter-of-factness, and it makes a decent primer on this monumental, even essential, American personality. Inevitably, however, it's certain to leave many of its readers hungry for more. Like everything else about his tumultuous times, LBJ's legacy is something we'll probably be struggling to deal with for a long, long while.