Description
Book SynopsisLyndon Johnson brought to the presidency a political outlook steeped in New Deal liberalism and the idea of government intervention for the public good—at home or abroad. Seeking to fulfill John Kennedy's pledge in Southeast Asia, LBJ constructed a fatal coupling of the Great Society and the anti-Communist imperative. Pay Any Price is Lloyd Gardner's riveting account of the fall into Vietnam; of behind-the-scenes decision-making at the highest levels of government; of miscalculation, blinkered optimism, and moral obtuseness. Blending political biography with diplomatic history, Gardner has written the first book on American involvement in the Vietnam War to use the full resources and newly declassified documents of the Johnson Library, and to tell whole the story of Johnson and Vietnam. The book is filled with fresh interpretations, brilliantly incisive portraits of the president and his men, and new perspectives on America's most divisive foreign war. Gardner describes for the first time how, as tragedy swirled around the deliberations in Washington, Clark Clifford and Dean Rusk struggled for the president's soul, culminating in the bombing halt of 1968 and the Johnson decision not to run. The war finally sundered the liberal cold war consensus, Gardner argues, and brought to an end the New Deal politics that had dominated American political life since 1933. Pay Any Price is a major work of history by one of our most distinguished historians.
Trade ReviewRemarkably rich analysis...an especially important and insightful contribution to the literature on the Vietnam War. -- Gary R. Hess * American Historical Review *
Striking material...this subject has been written about often, but never with keener understanding. -- Ronald Steel, author of
Pax Americana,
The End of Alliance: America and the Future of Europe,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century, and other works on American foreign policy
The best in print...an impressive range of sources to craft a work that not only delineates LBJ's dilemmas but penetrates his motives. -- John Prados, author of Presidents' Secret Wars
An unusually lucid and even gripping work of scholarship. -- Jeff Stein * The Washington Post *
An absolutely terrific book...Pay Any Price is simply the best book on the period anyone has written. -- Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990
