Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon's Johnson's Wars

Vandiver considers this book more biography than anything else. As in his previous biographies, of Stonewall Jackson and John J. Pershing, Vandiver, a military historian at Texas A&M University, tries to identify with his subject to an unusual degree. This time the subject is Lyndon Johnson. How did Johnson view the Vietnam War? Vandiver wonders. What did he feel as he tried to direct policy in the war he inherited from the assassinated President John F. Kennedy? His actions are obvious, but what were his motives? This is treacherous ground for a biographer, so few try it to the extent Vandiver does. Some readers may decide that Vandiver's empathy for Johnson has turned into apologetic sympathy. That seems to be the case. Yet the sympathy is based on first-rate research on the paper trail as well as on the people trail. Traditionally, Presidents and other heads of state waging wars find their popularity soaring. Johnson's, however, nose-dived. Vandiver speculates intelligently on why a man so well-suited to become president turned out to be so ill-suited as a war president. While Vandiver's effort at empathetic psychobiography is credible, as far as it goes, it is likely that Johnson biographers of the complete life, including Robert Caro, Robert Dallek and Ronnie Dugger, will eventually arrive at answers based on a fuller record than that used here. (May)