Lyndon B. Johnson and the Transformation of American Politics by John L. Bullion (review)

resources by foreign capitalists and the new politico-legal regimes they brought at the end of the nineteenth century, and the transformation of Hispanic and indigenous landowners into wage earners in a highly stratified economy. Few books approach complicated issues with a similar balance of theoretical clarity and historical depth. Although some readers may wonder about recent concerns with racial identity and gender, Dunbar-Ortiz provides a sweeping analysis of the ways in which outsiders have sought to control land and water in northern New Mexico. To her credit, she attempts to highlight Native agency and resistance to expropriation, even as her methodological framework is a sociohistorical interpretation of systems and institutions. Her use of Marxist stages and a materialist view of historical development may seem strange to scholars immersed in poststructrualism and cultural studies, but she attempts to shine a bright light on the contentious struggle over land in northern New Mexico. For this, her book will remain crucial reading for anyone interested in southwestern , Native American, and Chicana/o history. University of Texas at El Paso Jeffrey P. Shepherd Lyndon B. Johnson and the Transformation of American Politics. By John L. Bullion. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. Pp. 260. Study questions, notes, bibliography , index. ISBN 978-0-32138-325-9. $20.67, paper.) John Bullion faced a daunting task. He was supposed to write a brief biography of a man who was larger than life, whose career spanned decades, and who wielded power during some of the most controversial times of the last century. This work would have to be balanced, objective, and based on solid research. It would also have to make this very complicated man understandable to a new generation of students while not alienating scholars. Fortunately for young people, and the general public, Bullion has succeeded in his task. He has written a thoughtful, balanced, and very readable biography of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Although the book offers no new insights for scholars, it does provide a thorough overview of the president. Despite his personal connection to LBJ (his father knew the president well), Bullion manages to show the strengths that made LBJ such a key figure (his keen insight into people and his understanding of the uses and limitations of political power) as well as his flaws (his insecurities, his ego, and his sometimes callous disregard for those around him). This balance also applies to Bullion’s discussions of LBJ’s handling of the war in Vietnam. Bullion puts the war into the larger context of the Cold War, but does not overlook LBJ’s role in shaping the war. Perhaps most importantly from a student’s point of view, he untangles the complicated factors affecting the president ’s decisions concerning the escalation of the war. In addition to the pervasive anti-communist mentality which encouraged continuing hostilities against the North Vietnamese, LBJ feared the war’s impact on his domestic programs, worried about the political ramifications of losing the war, and failed to ask key 352 Southwestern Historical Quarterly January *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 352 questions about the intelligence he received from military and civilian intelligence sources. Bullion pays special attention to LBJ’s understanding of power. He raises this issue in the introduction and then comes back to it repeatedly throughout the book. Without comprehending LBJ’s definition of power, no one can begin to know how LBJ operated both at home and abroad. For Johnson, power existed to be utilized to benefit people. Those who understood the uses and limitations of power were, according to Johnson, the ones who deserved to wield it. Bullion explains that Johnson became frustrated with those who did not recognize this, and became confused when some groups began to question the means by which he accomplished his goals. The president, Bullion emphasizes, equated power with results and did not care about the means he had to use to reach his goal. Bullion also continually returns to the theme of the connections between, as he puts it in the introduction, “the power [LBJ] amassed and the limitations under which he used it” (p. 7). No student of this time period can afford...