PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThe programs addressed education, health care, civil rights, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation and even media offerings: It was the Great Society that created public television and radio. Thus Lyndon Johnson could be said to be the progenitor of Sesame Street, as Joshua Zeitz reminds us in Building the Great Society, his well-researched and readable history of a vast governmental effort to make America anew ... In large part, Mr. Zeitz’s story is a group portrait of the aides who helped the president realize his grand project ... Even so, Johnson is the dominant figure in the story, his overpowering personality evident throughout ... In the end, Mr. Zeitz concedes, the Great Society failed in many ways. It didn’t 'save urban America from blight or depressed rural areas from further decline.' Indeed, it 'disappointed liberal aspirations and only confirmed the worst of conservative fears.' Still, he notes, it is hard to imagine the U.S. today without the initiatives that Johnson set in motion.
Frances FitzGerald
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal...she has crafted a well-written, thought-provoking and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail ... What is the future of the Christian right? In The Evangelicals, Ms. FitzGerald treats her subject mostly as a historical phenomenon with a long and interesting genealogy. But she is obviously aware of its persistence and the obstacle it still presents to an 'enlightened' or liberal agenda. What the Christian right almost certainly will not do—even if it is not now what it once was—is lay down the struggle to shape America.
