The Best of Intentions

The Best of Intentions explores the politics, the people, and the ins and outs of the Great Society programs - and how, inevitably, they began to go awry. Beginning with the Kennedy administration's early, futile efforts to alter the social landscape of poverty and education, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Irwin Unger traces the evolution of the Great Society programs and agenda, chronicling the relentless and savvy persistence of LBJ to push JFK's programs through - and make them his own. Yet almost on the eve of his triumph, the foundation of the Great Society had already begun to shift and crumble. Now, thirty years later, the Republican Congress is reconsidering those Great Society programs, arguing that they have grown to consume the national budget and reshape, to our detriment, social policy. An epic exploration of people and politics in an age of unrest, The Best of Intentions is the first comprehensive history of a legislative program that continues to dominate today's political scene.