The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon B. Johnson: Volumes 7–8: Mississippi Burning and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act, June 1, 1964–July 4, 1964

Drawing on President Johnson's Oval Office recordings, these volumes of carefully annotated transcripts from the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs cover one critical month during which Johnson's landmark civil rights bill passed the Senate, and three student civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. The transcripts, mostly of phone conversations, reveal LBJ in a virtuoso performance, challenging and cajoling his cabinet members and advisers on Southeast Asia ("We've already violated [the Geneva Accords] in sending an armed plane [into Laos], haven't we?"), rattling off poll results for the upcoming presidential election, maneuvering around Sen. John Stennis of Mississippi regarding the murdered civil rights workers. (Stennis says, "There's... a local colored man had been making himself obnoxious, smart-aleck troublemaker, I'm afraid somebody's after him and just got the others along with him.") Although a priceless historical record—sometimes disturbing, sometimes surprising—the voluminous transcripts are frustratingly choppy, riddled with the ramblings, interjections, and false starts of unscripted conversation. But this is a significant record of American history in the making, and for anyone fascinated by LBJ or the inner working of the White House, this is an invaluable record. (Apr.)