In the 1960s Lady Bird Johnson sought to improve the natural appearance of Washington, D.C., to make the nation’s highways less cluttered with billboards and junkyards, and to advance the environmental agenda of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. The popular understanding of what she did remains incomplete, and her role as a woman conservationist has not been well understood. In this, the first book to example her accomplishments as First Lady, Lewis Gould shows Lady Bird Johnson as a catalyst for environmental ideas and as a powerful and persuasive force within her husband’s administration. Although passage of the Highway Beautification Act in 1965 was the legislative apex of her efforts, Lady Bird Johnson also articulated a wide range of conservation issues, framing policy initiatives and focusing public opinion. She instilled conservation and ecological ideas in the national mind, Gould argues, with a skill and adroitness that puts Mrs. Johnson in the front rank among modern First Ladies. Indeed, in his view, only Eleanor Roosevelt surpasses her in importance. This book is the result of Gould’s extensive research in the LBJ Library and draws on his interviews with such key figures as Interior Secretary Steward Udall, Press Secretary Liz Carpenter, District of Columbia Mayor Walter Washington, and Lady Bird Johnson herself.

Gould has dusted off, updated, and thinned his 1988 "Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment" to kick off the new series on the wives of US presidents.

Gould (American history, U. of Texas-Austin) has dusted off, updated, and thinned his 1988 Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment to kick off the new series on the wives of US presidents. He draws on Johnson's White House papers and interviews with her and her close associates to argue that she was one of the most politically active First Ladies though her concern with the environment was overshadowed by protests against the Vietnam War. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A revelation . . . a book in the Caro mold, using Lady Bird, along with tapes and transcripts of her entire White House diary, to tell the history of America during the Johnson years.”—The New York Times The inspiration for the documentary film The Lady Bird Diaries, premiering November 13 on Hulu Perhaps the most underestimated First Lady of the twentieth century, Lady Bird Johnson was also one of the most powerful. In Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, Julia Sweig reveals how indispensable the First Lady was to Lyndon Johnson’s administration—which Lady Bird called “our” presidency. In addition to advising him through critical moments, she took on her own policy initiatives, including the most ambitious national environmental effort since Theodore Roosevelt and a virtually unknown initiative to desegregate access to public recreation and national parks in Washington, D.C. Where no presidential biographer has understood Lady Bird’s full impact, Julia Sweig is the first to draw substantially on her White House diaries and to place her center stage. In doing so, Sweig reveals a woman ahead of her time—and an accomplished strategist and politician in her own right. Winner of the Texas Book Award • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award

This volume presents thirty-nine interpretive biographical essays on all first ladies, from Martha Washington to America's newest First Lady, Laura Bush. This new edition contains updated material on all the living First Ladies and updated bibliographies for each entry, as well as a portrait of the newest First Lady.

The made-in-Hollywood marriage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan was the partnership that made him president. Nancy understood how to foster his strengths and compensate for his weaknesses-- and made herself a place in history. Tumulty shows how Nancy's confidence developed, and reveals new details surrounding Reagan's tumultuous presidency that shows how Nancy became one of the most influential first ladies in history. -- adapted from jacket