Larger than Life: Lyndon B. Johnson and the Right to Vote

by Anne Quirk

Overview

An accessible, informed, and timely biography of Lyndon Johnson that centers his life and presidency around the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Keenly known for both his triumphs and his failures, Lyndon B. Johnson was one of the most complex and compelling presidents in US history. Anne Quirk’s biography alternates between chapters that follow LBJ’s childhood in rural Texas learning politics from his parents, his time teaching Mexican American students at a small-town school, and his days in Congress as majority leader and as vice president; and chapters that cover his work alongside civil rights leaders and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. An epilogue discusses the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling that struck down key portions of the act.

With engaging storytelling, Quirk paints a rich portrait of Johnson’s presidency, celebrating the accomplishments of his Great Society programs while refusing to shy away from his catastrophic decisions regarding Vietnam and the summer riots of 1967. Larger Than Life presents striking parallels to today’s political arena: an outsize character presiding over a divided nation—but to different ends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324015550
Publisher:	Norton Young Readers
Publication date:	07/27/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	25 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Anne Quirk was the publisher of the Horn Book Magazine and has worked for various book publishers. She studied history at Dartmouth College and lives in Massachusetts with her family.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Washington, DC, March 15, 1965 1

Chapter 2 Stonewall, Texas, August 27, 1908 9

Chapter 3 Cotulla, Texas, 1927 23

Chapter 4 Winder, Georgia, March 15, 1965 35

Chapter 5 Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965 47

Chapter 6 Washington, DC, December 1931 59

Chapter 7 Austin, Texas, February 28, 1937 69

Chapter 8 Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963 77

Chapter 9 The White House, Washington, DC, March 13, 1965 87

Chapter 10 Washington, OC, August 6, 1965 99

Chapter 11 Vietnam and Washington, 1955-1968 113

Chapter 12 Austin, Texas, December 12, 1972 127

Epilogue Supreme Court of the United States, 2013 135

Timeline 139

Acknowledgments 141

Notes 143

Selected Bibliography 147

Picture Credits 149

Index 153

Editorial Reviews

"An intriguing biography of a complex, colorful president."

Booklist

2021-06-16
Profile of a president who turned out—in some ways, at least—to be the right man at the right time.

Taking middle graders approximately as far as Robert Caro’s epic biography of Lyndon Johnson has gotten to date, Quirk follows the 36th president from birth and early days in the Texas Hill Country to the time when, in the shockwave caused by the televised racial violence in Selma and elsewhere, he delivered “the best speech of his life” while ramming through the Voting Rights Act and other landmark Great Society legislation. She rightly notes that he had never been known previously as a civil rights firebrand. Instead, she paints him as a workaholic who, motivated by both a will to power and the idealistic belief that people are fundamentally decent and have a right to a fair shake, saw his moment and seized it—while recognizing all along that when it came to civil rights, the overcoming was a long way from over. “Johnson wanted his speech to reach you,” the author writes, and in earnest of that she closes with a cogent if abbreviated and lamentably behind-the-times epilogue on challenges to voting rights sparked by the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision. The famously “tremendous” presidential ears are on display from infancy to last public appearance in a sparse assortment of photos. An early one depicts the White future president with the Mexican American students he taught in Cotulla, Texas.

A positive but not blindly adulatory introduction. (timeline, bibliography, endnotes, activities) (Biography. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews