LBJ, a biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, tells the sprawling story of one of the nation’s most controversial presidents, whose political career spanned the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, the Eisenhower years, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and Vietnam. The arc of his life is a version of the American dream: the poor boy from the backwaters of rural America ascending to the very pinnacle of power. Driven by an all-consuming ambition, he was both a charmer and a bully, loved, hated, and feared. Standing six feet four inches tall with a size 7-3/8 Stetson hat, he was, by all accounts, larger-than-life. He could be funny, often hilarious. He was a good dancer, a brilliant mimic. He gulped his food—chili and tapioca pudding—and enjoyed attractive women. Big, brash, and intimidating, a man who dominated people and institutions, he was a political virtuoso whose legislative accomplishments—civil rights, his war on poverty, and Great Society Programs—rivaled those of his mentor and role model, Franklin Roosevelt. But on the other side of the world in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson inherited a war that defied his political gifts and exposed his human failings. In four parts, LBJ traces his rise to power and his bitter downfall, from his early days, to his assumption of the presidency after the assassination of JFK, and to the tragedy of Vietnam.