Larger than life Lyndon B. Johnson and the right to vote

Like his father, who had a seat in the Texas legislature but could barely support his family, Lyndon B. Johnson was politically ambitious. He knew poverty as a child and, as a young adult, taught impoverished Mexican American children, experiences that may have bolstered his belief that government should help those in need while protecting them from injustice. From the Texas legislature, he rose to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, where he mastered the art of intimidating and persuading fellow legislators. He became vice president in 1960 and, after Kennedy's assassination, began his difficult but productive presidency. Illustrated with archival photos, the book offers a lively portrayal of Johnson and his times. While Quirk points out his failures, she also describes his significant successes in passing civil rights, health care, education, and environmental legislation. She particularly focuses on the 1965 Voting Rights Act and explains in an epilogue how a 2013 Supreme Court decision has undermined its effectiveness. Quotes are used effectively throughout the book. An intriguing biography of a complex, colorful president.

Profile of a president who turned out--in some ways, at least--to be the right man at the right time. Taking middle graders approximately as far as Robert Caro's epic biography of Lyndon Johnson has gotten to date, Quirk follows the 36th president from birth and early days in the Texas Hill Country to the time when, in the shockwave caused by the televised racial violence in Selma and elsewhere, he delivered "the best speech of his life" while ramming through the Voting Rights Act and other landmark Great Society legislation. She rightly notes that he had never been known previously as a civil rights firebrand. Instead, she paints him as a workaholic who, motivated by both a will to power and the idealistic belief that people are fundamentally decent and have a right to a fair shake, saw his moment and seized it--while recognizing all along that when it came to civil rights, the overcoming was a long way from over. "Johnson wanted his speech to reach you," the author writes, and in earnest of that she closes with a cogent if abbreviated and lamentably behind-the-times epilogue on challenges to voting rights sparked by the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision. The famously "tremendous" presidential ears are on display from infancy to last public appearance in a sparse assortment of photos. An early one depicts the White future president with the Mexican American students he taught in Cotulla, Texas. A positive but not blindly adulatory introduction. (timeline, bibliography, endnotes, activities) (Biography. 11-13) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.