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Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s White House by Joshua Zeitz 

Read by Dan Woren, with the recording produced by Penguin Audio.  

 Reviewed by Ryan Paul Winn 

Not since Abraham Lincoln’s had a presidential administration disrupted privileged white Americans as Lyndon Johnson’s did. Zeitz explains how the men behind LBJ’s Great Society made desegregation the building block for governmental programs.  The quagmire in Vietnam dragged down their legacy, but their domestic legislation forced the United States to become a more perfect union.  Dan Woren’s reading gives the narrative evenhanded emphasis, ensuring no detail is missed in recounting a march to strong-arm history.    

Ryan Paul Winn is a columnist and media critic who’s rarely without an audiobook or his earbuds. When not writing or teaching in the Liberal Studies department at College of Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wisconsin, he can be found researching overlooked history in local and national archives.