Gillette, former director of the LBJ Library's oral history program, has selected and edited these interviews, but the book belongs to Lady Bird Johnson. It captures her celebrated warmth, independence, pride in her own and her husband's achievements, and her ability to stand back and honestly assess her own and his motives, successes, and failures. The oral histories cover the first lady's life from her birth in 1912 through Johnson's presidency, thus throwing light on a more than half a century of American history. Just about every politically significant figure on the national stage turns up here, each caught (almost always generously) by Mrs. Johnson's discerning eye. Anyone interested in LBJ's election to Congress and his leadership of the Senate, Texas politics, the Johnsons's radio station, the crisis of Kennedy's assassination, and the Vietnam War will find Mrs. Johnson's reflections, from intimate knowledge, informative, delightful, and often riveting. Gillette himself deftly conducted most of the oral histories from which he draws; all have long been open to researchers and widely used (by such as LBJ biographer Robert Caro). Nevertheless, this volume, likely to be catnip to both fans and detractors of the Johnsons, makes available portions of Lady Bird's invaluable and incisive views otherwise inaccessible to the general reader. Photos. (Dec.)
Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History 
