Summary of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Lyndon Johnson’s mother, Rebekah, was a dreamy young girl who had spent her afternoons reading poetry under the shade of the big trees in the gardens of their house. She projected herself as a moral example to her son.

#2 Sam Johnson’s mother, Rebekah, had the same experience as Lyndon’s mother. She was a cultured woman who lost her father when she was young, and she married a small-time farmer and trader. She had to adjust to a completely different life.

#3 Johnson’s mother, Rebekah, was extremely discontent with her life with Sam Johnson. She felt alone and miserable, and she constantly fought with him over how the household was managed.

#4 The Baines family code was very strict about sobriety, and it was a guarantee of reliability and industry. Sobriety was a promise of morality and economic success. When Rebekah saw her husband drink, she saw how badly it affected him, and she cried a lot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669395799

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Insights on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Lyndon Johnson’s mother, Rebekah, was a dreamy young girl who had spent her afternoons reading poetry under the shade of the big trees in the gardens of their house. She projected herself as a moral example to her son.

#2

Sam Johnson’s mother, Rebekah, had the same experience as Lyndon’s mother. She was a cultured woman who lost her father when she was young, and she married a small-time farmer and trader. She had to adjust to a completely different life.

#3

Johnson’s mother, Rebekah, was extremely discontent with her life with Sam Johnson. She felt alone and miserable, and she constantly fought with him over how the household was managed.

#4

The Baines family code was very strict about sobriety, and it was a guarantee of reliability and industry. Sobriety was a promise of morality and economic success. When Rebekah saw her husband drink, she saw how badly it affected him, and she cried a lot.

#5

The image of Rebekah Baines Johnson that emerges from these stories is of a drastically unhappy woman, cut off from all the things that had once given her pleasure in life. She seemed under a compulsion to renew on her son’s behalf all the plans and projects she had given up for herself.

#6

Lyndon Johnson had a difficult time adjusting to school, and would often refuse to read or do work. He would instead stand next to his teacher all day long, refusing to let go of her skirt.

#7

The boy was so close to his mother that he may have been an only child when in fact he had four siblings. He described his relations with his siblings as little as possible.

#8

The boy’s willingness to exchange physical pain for mental peace provides an interior window on the constant tensions that must have shaped his childhood days. The old man had endless stories to tell of his cowboy days, and a renowned narrative gift.

#9

The cowboy image of the intrepid adventurer stayed with Johnson the rest of his life, though he never experienced the working day of a cowboy. The decline of the Western farmer was happening by the time he was born in 1908.

#10

When Lyndon Johnson was five, his family moved to a larger house in Johnson City. His father had found some real estate business in Austin and wanted to be nearby. The new house was nicer than the old one, and the move gave Rebekah an escape from her isolation.

#11

Johnson’s dream was a statement of his fears and desires. He feared becoming paralyzed like his grandmother, but he loved being close to his mother, who was always reading to him.

#12

The equation of femininity, intellectuality, and paralysis is made even clearer in Johnson’s dreams. He became Woodrow Wilson, the President he once described as too intellectual and too idealist for the people’s good.

#13

Johnson’s mother was interested in national politics, not local. She was hoping that someday her husband would run for national office, but he had no desire to leave his home.

#14

Sam courted Rebekah during his first stint in the state legislature, which lasted from 1904 to 1908. In those years, he supported bills to tax insurance, telephone, and sleeping car companies, and to regulate rates charged by