A president of immense political shrewdness and skill, Lyndon Baines Johnson begins his White House tenure with a string of stunning accomplishments, and appears destined for Rushmore-level greatness.
Four years later, his presidency is in tatters, the spectacular early successes eclipsed by a single, equally spectacular failure: a ruinous and misbegotten war that will ultimately cost the lives of 58,000 Americans and upwards of two million Vietnamese.
How that happened — how Lyndon Johnson lost his way amidst a conflict he didn't start and couldn't end — is the subject of "LBJ's War," an audio documentary in oral history form, constructed from the recorded, and largely unheard, recollections of individuals who were there when this history was being made, and had a hand in its making.
