Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

by Joh A. Andrew and John A. Andrew III

Book Overview

In this narrative analysis, Mr. Andrew examines the underlying ideas and principal objectives of the most ambitious and controversial American reform effort since the New Deal. "An acute examination."-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post. American Ways Series.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566631858
• ISBN13: 9781566631853
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc/Bloomsbury
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Great Book!!!

Before I read this book, my knowledge of Lyndon Johnson's Presidency was slim. This book is great, it describes the Great Society Programs during the Johnson Administration (1963-1969), as well as their outcome. The book is a good source for readers interested in presidential history, the Johnson Administration, or history in general.

The Great Society

The book is quite comprehensive to be so small. I was expecting a big wordy book with a lot of adjectives but it turned out to be compact with about the right amount of detail to get the point across. Great reading for anyone that lived through the initial phases of the Great Society, especially in the southern states. It shows you how destructive social engineering is and how bad things can get when you grant priviledge and status to an underclass.

A Decent Look at the Great Society

This book looks at the government policy view of Great Society programs. It is flawed in that it detaches the Great Society legislation from LBJ's political skills, the nation at the time, and the political environment at the time.Many Great Society programs have provided a hand-up to success, better medical care, less polution, and much more. I would rank college funding very high, along with health care for the elderly.However, the book details that Great Society was also misguided in some ways. The urban renewal programs were flops. CAP and Model Cities come to mind as being especially inept. It was these Great Society programs that Reagan railed against as "big government, and correctly so.Hoever, much of the Great Society was a great success. High school graduation rates doubled, and college graduations tripled. Poverty was almost cut in half, even if the underlying caused sometimes remained (Johnson failed in his proposal to reform welfare). Head Start has helped tens of millions of children prepare for school. Pollution of the air, soil, and water was greatly reduced. Mass transit we take for granted in many cities was built. Medicare has served a couple hundred million people, when before few elderly people had health care of any kind. The number of doctors graduating doubled. Good medical centers became far more widespread, and medical excellence in our society reached new heights through research and funding. Life expectancy has jumped substantially. We owe our advances in medicine in large part to the programs of the Great Society. The National Endowment for the Arts has greatly expanded the arts in the nation. And how about public TV?So there were successes, and there were failures. This points out what is going right, what could be done better, or what should just be left alone.The author suggests that LBJ should have imposed more radical means to save costs (such as health care) and ensure proper outcomes; accountability. However, that was not possible at the time. Johnson, the politician of amazing instincts and legislative power, rammed his massive programs through while the window of opportunity was there after his landslide election, leaving it to later leaders to review his work later. He rammed so many bills through Congress that some of the details were a little sloppy.Which brings us to this book.

Finally a Book that Focuses on Great Society Programs

Andrew has written an interesting and informative book about some of the programs that created vital opportunities for indigent people to escape poverty. Andrew discusses the key laws Johnson passed to improve the lives of Americans, including Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start and many others. As a historical account of legislative acts it is excellent, and on that point it deserves five stars. However, when Andrew discusses how the Great Society affect later laws, the book becomes quite week. In fact it seems like Andrew wrote the bulk of the work in the eighties and only later interspersed a few sentences about the nineties. The index is also a bit sparse and could have been more detailed. This book is, nevertheless, a good read and deserves the attention of persons interested in the Johnson administration.

Good work on 1960's social welfare policy

Anyone who reads this book will find that LBJ's Great Society was far from a failure, as Republicans today characterize it, but a mixed bag with many successes and a few long term failures. Yet, overall, it was - and still is - positive for America. Just look at the record -- Clean Air and Water bills, Medicare(health insurance for the elderly), Medicaid(health insurance for the disabled and poor), The Elementary and Secondary Education Act(for the first time the federal government gave K-12 schools funds), Head Start, labor law reform, Minimum Wage increase for the working poor, housing expansions through HUD, the Department of Transportation, increased farmer aid, wage supplements for the poor, job training expansions, the National Endowement for the Arts and Humanities, public broadcasting, consumer protection laws etc. The list goes on and on and on. These successes benefited - and benefit - everyone. The middle class and poor benefit from Medicare and education, as well as job training. The poor are given dignity in Medicaid and the Minimum Wage. All benefit from public broadcasting, as well as with clean streets, aid and environment and consumer laws. Working people support pro-labor labor law reform. And, let us never, ever forget, LBJ passed 3 monumental civil rights laws which benefit all persons of morality and conscience. Yes, as the book points out, there are some failures here. Welfare policy for the poorest of the poor - as well meant as it was - was a failure. Yet, I suspect it failed not because of what Great Society liberals intended to do long term, but because of what they expected the program to become with more funding. That is, funding was decimated for AFDC, and liberals in the 1970's wanted public works instead, which never came, so they settled for AFDC. In regard to Model Cities, the same rings true - failure. Yet, the positives outway the negatives by far and away - as this book shows all too well. Long live the Great Society!