The Best of Intentions: The Triumphs and Failures of the Great Society Under Kennedy, Johnson, and NixonThe Best of Intentions explores the politics, the people, and the ins and outs of the Great Society programs - and how, inevitably, they began to go awry. Beginning with the Kennedy administration's early, futile efforts to alter the social landscape of poverty and education, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Irwin Unger traces the evolution of the Great Society programs and agenda, chronicling the relentless and savvy persistence of LBJ to push JFK's programs through - and make them his own. Yet almost on the eve of his triumph, the foundation of the Great Society had already begun to shift and crumble. Now, thirty years later, the Republican Congress is reconsidering those Great Society programs, arguing that they have grown to consume the national budget and reshape, to our detriment, social policy. An epic exploration of people and politics in an age of unrest, The Best of Intentions is the first comprehensive history of a legislative program that continues to dominate today's political scene. |
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activists administration administration's AFDC agency American antipoverty arts August benefits bill budget Califano campaign civil rights Committee community action congressional conservative cost Democratic domestic early Economic environmental ESEA fiscal funding ghetto grams guaranteed income Head Ibid issue January Job Corps John Kennedy Labor Lady Bird Lady Bird Johnson Larry O'Brien Lawrence O'Brien Lawrence O'Brien Oral LBJ Library leaders legislative liberal Lyndon Johnson major measure Medicare memo ment million Mills Model Cities Moynihan National Newsweek Ninetieth Congress Nixon O'Brien Oral History Office percent political poor poverty line poverty program president president's Press proposed reform Republican Sargent Shriver Secretary Senate session Shriver Social Security Society programs task force tion told Tragedy of Lyndon urban Vietnam vote Walter Heller War on Poverty Washington welfare White House Wilbur Cohen Wilbur Mills York Youth