Among the best of the multi-volume biographies of LB. (See my Review of Randall Woods, LBJ:Architect of American Ambition.) We see his political genius as he manipulated the Senate into one progressive measure after the other - whether they liked it or not - just because it was the right thing to do. I would love to have witnessed Richard Russel's getting the "treatment." Of course, this element of LBJ's political life has been described many, many times by a number of writers. Dallek has the great distinction of showing ever so patiently and methodically how it was that the US became entangled in a civil war in Vietnam - just as we are now entangled in a war in Iraq - and stayed that way for decades. Fatal flaws - for which old men never pay the price, but then again we fools let them escape without consequence.
Quite a timely read for those pondering the question of Iraq, and the more fundamental issue: Does the US gov. and the American people (the two are not identical) have no memory? Do we need to learn gneration after generation that imperialist wars of colonial occupation are a relict of the 19th century, that no amount of white man's arrogance and impenetrale stupidity will alter that fact? But then again the rest of us allow it to happen - again and again. So perhaps the answer is 'yes.'