Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (Unabridged)

Taking Charge brings you into the room with an American political legend, still hated and revered a quarter century after his death. We hear Lyndon Johnson as he schemes and blusters, rewards and punishes, and reveals a bedrock core of unshakable political beliefs.

The only president to record his private conversations from his first day in office, LBJ ordered these tapes locked in a vault until at least the year 2023. But now they have been unsealed, providing a close-up look at a president taking unprecedented power, from John F. Kennedy's murder in November 1963 to Johnson's campaign for a landslide victory.

Taking Charge is filled with revelations about the full-blooded Texan behind the public image. You will hear LBJ:

• Revealing his self-doubts and personal anguish over the responsibilities of the presidency
• Receiving the frank criticism of his wife, Lady Bird Johnson
• Staking his presidency on a revolutionary civil rights bill
• Scuttling Robert Kennedy's drive to be his vice president
• Using the Tonkin Gulf attack to expand the American beachhead in Southeast Asia
• Unveiling his private, tortured early doubts that the US could ever win a war in Vietnam

Taking Charge gives us an unprecedented look into a crucial presidency that continues to shape our lives today. In LBJ's own words, it is history "with the bark off".