Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Childhood Memories
Chapter 2: Education, 1924-1934
Chapter 3: A Whirlwind Courtship
Chapter 4: 1934-1937, A Future in Politics?
Chapter 5: In Congress, 1937-1940
Chapter 6: 1941, "A Learning Experience"
Chapter 7: 1942, Managing the Congressional Office
Chapter 8: Nesting and Investing, 1942-1943
Chapter 9: War Years, 1943-1945
Chapter 10: "A Grinding Occupation," 1946-1947
Chapter 11: "The Hardest Years of Our Lives," 1948
Chapter 12: LBJ in the Senate
Chapter 13: A Senate Wife
Chapter 14: The LBJ Ranch
Chapter 15: The Loyal Opposition, 1953-1955
Chapter 16: "Toward the Liberal Side", 1956-1959
Chapter 17: 1960, The Point of No Return
Chapter 18: Vice Presidency: "A Pebble in a Shoe"
Chapter 19: The White House Years
Afterword
Appendix: Lady Bird Johnson's Oral History Interviews
Bibliographical Note
Index

About the Author

Michael L. Gillette directed the LBJ Library's Oral History Program from 1976 to 1991. He later served as director of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and is currently the executive director of Humanities Texas in Austin. He is the author of Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History.

Reviews

"A crisp and absurdly endearing book....What's so uniquely winning about Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, and what makes me grateful to have picked it up, are the old-fashioned and now threadbare virtues it evokes and relentlessly champions. You will find yourself ennobled by Johnson's example and may wield this book like a sunlit talisman against your post-holiday depression."--Dwight Garner, New York Times
"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....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."--Publishers
Weekly, starred review
"[I]t is clear that Gillette is a master interviewer who is familiar and comfortable with his interviewee....The depth and detail of Johnson's memories are truly amazing, and her journalistic education shines through in her vivid descriptions of places, events, and emotions....[Gillette's] ability to seamlessly intertwine Lady Bird's recollections with those of others is one of the most impressive aspects of this book."--Sound Historian: Journal of the
Texas Oral History Association
"Here's history at its best--as seen firsthand by a charming, clever, and canny woman. Lady Bird Johnson's voice, often funny and always elegant, rings out through these pages. A wonderfully readable book filled with unique insights about some of the most powerful people of the 20th century."--Cokie Roberts, political journalist and author of Founding Mothers and Ladies of Liberty