From JFK's assassination to the war in Vietnam, America's leading presidential historian provides a unique and revealing behind-the-scenes record of the tumultuous first year of Lyndon Johnson's presidency in this first volume of edited transcripts of LBJ's secretly tape recorded White House conversations. Beschloss has expertly annotated the transcripts to place the personalities, events, and issues in their historical context. In the words of LBJ himself, this is history "with the bark off."