‘Prisoner Of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, The Great Society And The Limits Of Liberalism’

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Randall B. Woods' Prisoner of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society and the Limits of Liberalism 

The ill-disguised contempt with which much of post-Kennedy Washingtonviewed President Lyndon Johnson was on nasty display on election night in 1964, after LBJ routed Barry Goldwater. Art Buchwald, the Washington Post columnist, sneered at a cocktail party, “We were nice to this fellow when he was running against Goldwater because we were scared of Goldwater, but now we’re going to get him because he’s just a Texas clown!”

Buchwald was perhaps piqued because the “clown,” in his first months in the White House, achieved passage of a civil rights act for which JFK had struggled ineffectively for almost three years — a measure guaranteeing blacks equal access to public facilities and employment, among other benefits.

Further, Johnson’s early success was a prelude to a period of so-called “Great Society” legislation that was tantamount to a second New Deal. Although many conservatives viewed Johnson’s social programs with scorn, he overcame a Congress dominated by Southerners (Democrats, in the main) with legislative adeptness equaled by no other American president. Johnson combined persuasion with occasional brute force to achieve what he wished.

The reasons that many of his programs fell short of the intended achievements — “the unintended consequences of well-intentioned policy” — is the theme of Randall B. Woods’ account. A professor at the University of Arkansas, and an early LBJ biographer, Mr. Woods is both incisive and objective in appraising the origins of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and their fate.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link: 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/3/book-review-prisoner-of-hope-lyndon-b-johnson-the-/

Shadow Warrior: A Look Back At William E. Colby And The CIA

Joseph C. Goulden, a veteran journalist and author of several books on espionage and intelligence, reviewed Randall B. Woods book on former CIA director William Colby for the Washington Times.

Seventeen years after his death, former Director of Central Intelligence William E. Colby remains a controversial figure among many persons in and around the intelligence community. Did he betray generations of fellow officers by going public with a so-called “family jewels” list of CIA misdeeds over the years? Or did the disclosure save the agency from dissolution by an angry Congress?

Disappointingly, despite the sprawling length of “Shadow Warrior,” Randall B. Woods, a professor at the University of Arkansas, does not attempt to answer that basic question. At hand is a book that relies heavily upon secondary sources and offers very little fresh information about Colby. Further, Mr. Woods drops some conspiratorial hints that should raise eyebrows among those familiar with the intelligence world. (For instance, he has rogue CIA contract officer Edwin Wilson forging documents to smear a prime minister of Australia in the 1970s, something that escaped the attention of the myriad investigators and writers who explored his villainous career.)

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/10/book-review-shadow-warrior/