Head Start, Job Corps, Foster Grandparents, College Work-Study, VISTA, Community Action, and the Legal Services Corporation are familiar programs, but their tumultuous beginning has been largely forgotten. Conceived amid the daring idealism of the 1960s, these programs originated as weapons in Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, an offensive spearheaded by a controversial new government agency. Within months, the Office of Economic Opportunity created an array of unconventional initiatives that empowered the poor, challenged the established order, and ultimately transformed the nation's attitudes toward poverty.
In Launching the War on Poverty, historian Michael L. Gillette weaves together oral history interviews with the architects of the Great Society's boldest experiment. Forty-nine former poverty warriors, including Sargent Shriver, Adam Yarmolinsky, and Lawrence F. O'Brien, recount this inside story of unprecedented governmental innovation. The interviews capture the excitement and heady optimism of Americans in the 1960s along with their conflicts and disillusionment.
This new edition of Launching the War on Poverty adds the voice of Lyndon Johnson to the story with excerpts from his recently-released White House telephone conversations. In these colorful and brutally candid conversations, LBJ exercises his full arsenal of presidential powers, political leverage, and legendary persuasiveness to win one of his most difficult legislative battles. The second edition also documents how the OEO's offspring survived their volatile origins to become broadly supported features of domestic policy.

Lady Bird Johnson, an early champion of the environment and Project Head Start, has been widely acknowledged as one of America's greatest First Ladies. In a 1982 poll, historians ranked her the third most influential, behind Abigail Adams and Eleanor Roosevelt. This oral history encompass three important stories. The first is that of a young woman's transformation from a shy, rural East Texan into one of America's most admired First Ladies. The second reveals the remarkable emergence of Lyndon Johnson, one of the twentieth century's most powerful political and legislative leaders, as told by his most trusted confidante. Finally, this volume presents a keen observer's day-by-day view of a turbulent world, as "the greatest generation" confronted momentous challenges at home and abroad. Lady Bird Johnson's oral history provides an intimate, first-person narrative of her own development and activities as well as the life she shared with LBJ. It includes her vivid descriptions of the moments and events that shaped their destiny and influenced their attitudes on such issues as civil rights, education, health care, and national defense. Her rich verbal portraits brings to life scores of prominent political personalities, including Sam Rayburn, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. The core narrative consists of thirty-seven oral history interviews that Michael L. Gillette conducted with her during the late 1970s and 1980s; the transcripts were opened only in May 2011 and have never previously been available for research. The lengthy seal under which they have been held is a measure of Lady Bird's expansiveness and candor. In recording the interviews, Mrs. Johnson marshaled the same elegant prose and attention to detail that characterized her memoir, A White House Diary. Selected excerpts from interviews with some of those who knew Lady Bird Johnson best, as well as transcripts of White House tapes, appear in sidebars to amplify and supplement her own narrative. Oxford will publish the book to coincide with the centennial of Lady Bird Johnson's birth in December 2012.

Over a span of eighteen years, Lady Bird Johnson recorded forty-seven oral history interviews with Michael Gillette and his colleagues. These conversations, just released in 2011, form the heart of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, an intimate story of a shy young country girl's transformation into one of America's most effective and admired First Ladies. Lady Bird Johnson's odyssey is one of personal and intellectual growth, political and financial ambition, and a shared life with Lyndon Baines Johnson, one of the most complicated, volatile, and powerful presidents of the 20th century. The former First Lady recounts how a cautious, conservative young woman succumbed to an ultimatum to marry a man she had known for less than three months, how she ran his congressional office during World War II, and how she transformed a struggling Austin radio station into the foundation of a communications empire. As a keen observer of the Washington scene during the eventful decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson shares dramatic accounts of pivotal moments in American history. We attend informal dinners at Sam Rayburn's apartment and opulent social events at grand mansions from an earlier age. Her rich verbal portraits bring to life scores of personalities, including First Ladies Edith Bolling Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Pat Nixon. An informal, candid narrative by one of America's most admired First Ladies, this volume reveals how instrumental Lady Bird Johnson's support and guidance were at each stage of her husband's political ascent and how she herself emerged as a significant political force.