With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency

“This is a major challenge that LBJ poses to us: he’s very difficult to evaluate...” A Conversation with Dr. Mark Lawrence on The End of Ambition

Episode Summary

LBJ Presidential Library Director and author Dr. Mark Lawrence discusses how America’s once-thriving ambition to democratize and develop much of the Third World diminished during the Johnson presidency, and why.

Episode Notes

Dr. Mark Lawrence is the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library and a former professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. An expert on the Lyndon Johnson years, he is the author of three books relating to America’s foreign policy during the period. His latest, The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era, looks at how America’s once thriving ambition to democratize and develop much of the Third World diminished during the Johnson presidency, and why.