A fresh look at Lady Bird Johnson that upends her image as a plain Jane who was married for her money and mistreated by Lyndon. This Lady Bird worked quietly behind the scenes through every campaign, every illness, and a trying presidency as a key strategist, fundraiser, barnstormer, peacemaker, and indispensable therapist. Lady Bird grew up the daughter of a domineering father and a cultured but fragile mother. When a tall, pushy Texan named Lyndon showed up in her life, she knew what she wanted: to leave the rural Texas of her childhood and experience the world like her mother dreamed, while climbing the mountain of ambition she inherited from her father. She married Lyndon within weeks, and the bargain they struck was tacitly agreed upon in the courtship letters they exchanged: this highly gifted politician would take her away, and she would save him from his weaknesses.

"Marriage is the most underreported story in political life and yet is often the key to its success. This is the idea driving a revealing new portrait of Lady Bird as the essential strategist, fundraiser, barnstormer, peacemaker, and ballast for Lyndon...[A] biography of a political partnership that helps explain how the wildly talented but deeply flawed Lyndon Baines Johnson ended up making history..."--P. [2] of jacket.