New releases by Interpol, Phoebe Bridgers, Lambchop
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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]
ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
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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The PM is drawing cautious distance from Donald Trump over Iran – but history suggests Britain’s support may run deeper than it appears, just as it did during the Vietnam war, says KEITH FLETT