New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, John Luther Adams
The Great Dissembler
JOHN GREEN appreciates a meticulous dissection of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency that exposes political and economic structures in the US
SITUATION ROOM: Walt Rostow shows President Lyndon B. Johnson a model of the Khe Sanh area 02/15/1968. Johnson ordered the US military to hold Khe Sanh at all costs, and with the eventual abandonment of the base "Khe Sanh became etched in the minds of many Americans as a symbol of the pointless sacrifice and muddled tactics that permeated a doomed U.S. war effort in Vietnam”.
[Public Domain]
Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol 4: The passage of Power
Robert A Caro, The Bodley Head, £30
WHO wants to read a biography of Lyndon Johnson?
His presidency of the US from 1963-69 was hardly a memorable one. But this is not so much a book about a bland US president but a meticulous dissection of political and economic structures in the US. It is also a riveting read by one of the modern masters of historical writing.
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